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Like a few other projects I've been working on at RAM Controls, the Missile Command project has received very little attention from me for quite some time now. Given my recent focus on all of the projects, I've made some progress even on the least favorite of them.

Once I had the 4.5" balls reproduced and the corresponding shafts, I kind of dropped the projects all together so I could deal with more pressing matters. Anyhow, after having the weekly freebie giveaways for awhile, I noticed a trend. Nearly everyone was going for the free 4.5" and shafts. Given that overwhelming interest, I decided to pull the trackball project out of storage and get working on it again.

The first new item I'm working on is the encoder wheel. It's an oddball shaped wheel that was used across many games, not just the 4.5" trackball games.

The original part was a plastic (nylon) injection molded part. The part worked well as-is and had little trouble. The only issue is that the "fingers" tend to break off very easily if mistreated in the least. Of course, I can fix that issue with little work.

Ok, here we go.

This is what I started with:

The original part is not NOS, but it's intact and in good enough condition to work from.


This is the part drawn up in Solidworks:

I took into account pretty much every detail of the original part, with the exception of the removal of some draft which was originally included only as a component of the injection molding process.


And here's the final result.

These are polyurethane molded encoder wheels. The best part is that the fingers on these will NOT break off. It's somewhat flexible, so they will bend without snapping off. They turned out perfect!!


Here's a side by side. OEM on left, Repro's on right.



Enjoy!!!

Comments/suggestions?

Dave
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