Cratercade

Nothing in this machine has a battery, a spring or a switch. The marble does all of it, including telling you that you scored.

A lunar pinball table, 14.8 × 20.4 × 10.0 in, printed in 517 parts and bolted together with 398 of its own bolts and nuts. 2 thumb paddles, a rubber-band launcher, 3 craters, and a sample bucket at the top that swings a flag up when it catches the marble.

The printed Cratercade table from the front right: a pale playfield inside orange rails, a teal apron across the front, a black bolted canopy holding clear panels, all of it in visible printed layer lines and standing on four white feet
Printed and assembled, raked 6° toward you on its own feet. The canopy is a bolted frame with PET sheet dropped into it, so the playfield stays in view and the marble stays in.
517
printed parts, plus 25 things you supply
4.7 lb
of PETG over 231.1 hours on the plate
398
printed bolts and nuts — no metal hardware
16.5 mm
one marble — the only thing that makes anything happen

One marble does the whole run.

12.6 × 18.9 in of playfield, and every bit of it is a route for one 16.5 mm marble. Scroll to send it round — everything that moves from here is the real joint travel, measured off the parts.

Draw the plunger back.

The band is anchored up-table of the rod, so it drives the plunger forward and you draw it out against the stretch. There is 30 mm of travel, taking the band from 68 to 98 mm, and where you stop is the whole of your aim.

Up the lane, round the top.

At the top, 2 curved walls turn the lane into an orbit and drop the marble into the playfield heading left. Every wall on the table stands 24 mm tall, half as much again as the marble is wide, so a fast one stays down.

3 craters on the way down.

The playfield is raked 6°, and that rake is all the power the marble ever gets. It works down the right of one crater and the left of the next, past the guides to the paddles, and a paddle sends it straight back up the middle.

Caught. The flag goes up.

The bucket hangs 36 mm behind a 4 mm wooden axle and the mast hangs 72 mm in front of it. A marble landing 25.7 mm out swings the beam over: the bucket drops 12 mm, the mast climbs 27 mm. That is the entire scoreboard.

Home under the deck.

The bucket dumps into the hopper and the marble runs back inside a covered channel below the playfield to the cup at the front. Pick it up, load it again. Both paddles swing 64°.

The deck arrives as 6 tiles.

The playfield is 12.6 × 18.9 in across. No printer makes that in one piece, so it isn’t one piece: it is 6 tiles of 160 × 160 mm at 14 mm thick, with 7 straps underneath bridging every seam and bolting down on both sides. The largest part on the whole machine measures 188 × 144 mm, which leaves room on a 200 mm bed.

Sliced with a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.2 mm layers, 2 walls and 15% infill, in PETG, with supports off. Those are the figures behind every mass and every hour quoted here.

2 across, 3 up the table. 160 × 160 mm each, 14 mm thick.

The smallest tile is 3.0 oz and 8.2 hours by itself — 6 nights of printing and the playfield is done. The rest of the machine is smaller parts, and a great many of them.

Playfield
21 parts
1.7 lb
Canopy and return cover
54 parts
1.7 lb
Rails, craters, ramp
22 parts
9.2 oz
Paddles and launcher
17 parts
7.0 oz
Bucket, hopper, cup
5 parts
2.3 oz
Bolts and nuts
398 parts
2.4 oz

A single bolt is 0.22 g and takes 4 minutes. All 398 of them together come to 2.4 oz, less than one deck tile, and they are the only thing holding the machine together.

The playfield photographed from directly above with the canopy lifted off: pale printed tiles inside orange perimeter rails, three round crater targets, the launch lane and orbit running down the right side, the orange landing ramp and yellow bucket at the top, and the teal paddles and apron across the front
Canopy off, straight down. You can see where the 6 tiles meet; every dark dot in the picture is a printed bolt head or a nut.

517 printed parts, 6 jobs.

The CAD file carries no materials at all, so the colours here are ours: one per group of parts, picked to show what each group does. Choose a job to light the pieces that do it.

21parts

6 tiles of 160 mm, 7 seam straps bridging them from underneath, 4 feet, and the 4 floor panels of the return channel. Tiling is the only reason a 12.6 × 18.9 in playfield comes off a desktop printer at all.

What arrives, and what you find.

Overall
14.8 × 20.4 × 10.0 in, standing on its own feet
Playfield
12.6 × 18.9 in, raked 6°
Weight
4.7 lb of PETG
Printed parts
517, from 95 distinct shapes
Fasteners
199 printed bolts, 199 printed nuts
Printer
200 × 200 mm bed, 118 mm of height
Print time
231.1 hours, about 9.6 days unattended
Slicer
0.4 mm nozzle, 0.2 mm layers, 2 walls, 15% infill, no supports
You supply
one 16.5 mm marble, 3 rubber bands, 16 PET panels cut to size, a 4 mm dowel and 4 felt pads
Paddle travel
64° each, independent
Flag
rises 27 mm when the bucket catches
The top of the playfield with the canopy off: the yellow sample bucket holding a white marble, its beam lying across the dowel in the orange jackpot frame, the flag mast swung up at the far end of that beam, and the yellow reset hopper alongside
Caught, and the flag is already up. Bucket, beam and mast are one printed part on a 4 mm dowel; it weighs 16.6 g, and the marble does the rest.

Assembled, tested and packed as one machine. Every fastener in it came off a printer rather than a hardware store.