Pinball is one of those classic arcade joys most of us never expected to keep at home — real cabinets cost a fortune and eat up half a room. But what if your printer could make one? A new project doing the rounds online is asking exactly that, and the answer might surprise you.
What's the project?
The build, demoed by 3D Printer Academy on YouTube, is a fully 3D printed tabletop pinball machine. The headline trick is multiplayer: two- or four-player setups can be linked together so the metal ball rockets out the back of one playfield and crashes into the next. It's modular too, so you can swap in custom bumpers, ramps, and themes. The design files are part of a Kickstarter campaign, but the bigger takeaway for hobbyists is that the geometry of a working pinball machine is now well within reach of a desktop printer.
Will plastic really hold up?
That's the fair question. A 100% printed pinball machine is lighter than a wooden one, so heavy-handed flipper presses can shift the whole cabinet. The fix is partly mechanical (rubber feet, a few weighted base plates) and partly material choice. PLA is fine for cosmetic shells but it can get brittle on impact zones. PETG handles repeated metal-ball strikes much better, and TPU is brilliant for bumper caps because a bit of squish softens the bounce and protects the ball.
How to print parts that survive real play
If you want a build that lasts past the first weekend, slicer settings matter more than the printer itself. A few rules of thumb:
- Walls over infill. Bump perimeters to 4–5 and keep infill at 25–30% gyroid — it's the wall count that resists ball strikes.
- Layer height 0.2 mm on a 0.4 mm nozzle is a good balance of speed and strength.
- Print orientation matters. Lay flippers and ramps so the ball rolls along layer lines, not across them, to avoid splitting.
- Mind your supports. Tree supports are friendlier on curved ramps and easier to clean off than grid supports.
Try it on your printer
You don't need anything fancy. An Ender 3, Bambu A1, or Prusa MK4 with a standard 0.4 mm nozzle is more than enough for the parts. Pick up a roll of PETG for the playfield surfaces, some TPU for bumpers, and PLA for the decorative shell — all available at Flarelab. Start with a single-player module before you commit to a full four-player setup, and you'll have a tabletop pinball you actually built yourself.
Inspired by reporting from Hackaday.