Kitty Pinball Machine

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After making a dog-shaped treat machine powered by an arduino + servo, I wanted to try the same idea with purely mechanical workings. And so was born the Kitty Pinball Machine!

It started out with super rough prototyping to figure out the geometry needed to get the flipper action working for a cat-sized being

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From there I built up a draftboard version of the basic machine. The pinball parts are separated from the treat dispensing parts by a spinner that spans both layers. The pinball hit the spinner and the spinner hits the treat out of the chute

Then I tested it with my cat to see if the idea would even work… and it did! Proof of concept was a success! = ^.^=

I wanted to just use acrylic for a shiny finished look (and avoid using paint) so I had to make some adjustments until the acrylic version worked smoothly

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Then it was just a final design pass to create the ‘Fish tank’ look

I’m super happy with how this came out, and my cat loves to play with it. I’m still wrapping up a few build things, but am going to share the SVG files for other people to make it too

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Love it.

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I feel that there is no greater use of the Glowforge than this. Well played.

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Wow, such an evolution!

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Spectacular!

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Pretty cool!! Do the treats self feed or do you load them individually?
I can see if it self feeds there will be some hefty cats in the forge family! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I don’t even have a cat and I would buy one!

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That is one of the finest things I’ve seen so far. ( Heck with the cats, I wonder how it will handle M&Ms?) :smile:

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I love this, my kitties are so jealous (my GF arrives Monday! so maybe they will get one someday).

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I was thinking the exact same thing with @jbmanning5’s comment!

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Ohmygosh I absolutely love this!!! So looking forward to the SVG files. I have a cat who would definitely use it–he loves his treat ball. Well done!

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It’s designed to load one at a time

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Set it up in a restaurant that a penny loads a candy. It would make a fortune from people just wanting to watch it.

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yes ! M&Ms!

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SUPER Cool. I’m very impressed. Now if only I were a cat person rather than a dog person. :smile:

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PEZ dispenser… (am i dating myself?)

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Amazing!!

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This is so adorable!!!

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I find it intriguing that your cat is so willing to do some of the work. My cat would just never get the concept of doing it himself.

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This is amazing - great work!

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