The Future of Golfing and Arcades

The Idea

There is nothing I love more than having no rules to follow and letting my mind roam free in fusion 360. For this project I decided to explore a field which I hadn’t explored before… Golf! 

When presented with the idea of designing a custom arcade machine, I thought I would include the golfing community in the arcade world and expand on their current arcade machines. 

After some research, I found out that existing golf arcade machines are rather boring. They are missing the element of surprise, complexity and luck arcade machines offer. 

So… Join me for this revolutionary journey! From screens to real live golf, from flat surfaces to curves, loops, and more curves. 

Link for the free version of fusion 360 for educators and students:

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/education (United States link)

Youtube tutorial on how to install it:

How to install Autodesk Fusion 360 Student Version? - YouTubeYouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch

Web tutorial on how to install it:

How to install Fusion 360 for a student or download ...Autodeskhttps://www.autodesk.com › caas

In this step I want to include a list of general tips which have made the designing of projects run smoothly.

• Use a mouse! Seems basic and logical but if you don’t have a mouse it is going to take twice as long.
• Name everything! You want to be able to edit and modify your design later and everything being called body 1 and sketch 4 will not help the cause. “It’s only two sketches, I will remember” but, you won’t! You will waste time searching for the right sketch to change and your project will look chaotic and messy. 
• Use shortcuts, while I recommend having a mouse, you don’t have to train it. Dragging your mouse across the screen all the time is unnecessary. Especially, when you can just press “L” for line, “M” to move, “C” for circle, and, most importantly “S” for sketch shortcuts. 

Which golf stick?

Let’s begin by discussing and designing the golf stick which our arcade machine is going to use. Despite what previous impressions might have made you believe; I have never played golf in my life! So, I had to ask my experienced golf expert friend, Geppetto(chat.gpt) for some golf stick recommendations. 

To do this my friend wrote me a summary of the different types of golf stick in addition to their characteristics and what they were used for. From this search I concluded that a putter would do the job smoothly. 

The putter, a stick whose design aims to cover short distances with the highest precision possible. The putter is normally used in the green area, which is the area where the hole is located.  For additional information, in this area you usually find short-cut grass for the shots to be done in better conditions. This is something to keep in mind when thinking about details to complete the arcade.

Design of the golf stick:

I divided the design of the putter into 4 steps:

1. Firstly, I search on the internet for a good reference photo of the putter (which will be attached below) and searched up the typical measurements a putter must have. You would emphasize of finding a good reference photo in relation to the head of the stick, which is just the part of the golf tick with which you hit the ball.
2. Secondly, I opened fusion 360 and imported the image as a canvas to work with or looking at the canvas. 
3. Working with the canvas will imply that the putter in the reference image isn’t titled and is easy to follow since a tilted putter would make your design be smaller or unproportioned. 
4. Looking at the canvas means creating the putter based on measurement and instinct. Since the putter is a straightforward stick, both options suit the task and which one you choose is purely based on your likings. 
5. Thirdly, the head. This step consists of designing the head through a sketch, I advise it to be in the same plane as the canvas. However, if you are familiar with the create form feature in fusion and have a vision, you can always use it instead of a normal sketch. 
6. Fourthly, the next step would be to sketch/extrude the missing parts of the golf stick. Our missing parts are the shaft; metal rod of the golf stick and the grip; the rubber part of the golf stick where you usually hold onto the stick. 

To design this, you can either create a sketch onto a face of the head of the stick and draw a circle which you would extrude to transform into the shaft. For the grip you should repeat the process described above for the shaft but include a bigger circle for the grip as it tends to have a bigger diameter than the shaft.

These would be the four steps to design the golf stick. Of course, these steps are general, meaning, that they can serve as a guideline to do a more appropriate golf stick or to add more sticks to the design making it more appealing for advanced golfers. 

Preparations, measurements, and considerations…

For this design to be successful you need to consider a series of factors. The first factor would be the size of the arcade, with a quick google search you find out that the normal parameters are about 560mm to about 760mm wide and 1670mm tall. However, these measurements don’t quite match our design since our design can’t have a square base but a rectangular one for the golfer to have more space to shoot. Therefore, I have increased the length of the arcade to 1850 mm, which does seem like a lot but once you look at the design it isn’t as crazy as it seems. Additionally, I have made the bases width 600mm and the height 1855mm. 

Why these measurements?

I wanted the experience to be as comfortable and non-claustrophobic as possible. Considering that a human’s normal height is 1.70 meters to 1.80 meters, the machine has to offer a realistic height for the golfers to see which hole has their golf ball entered. Making the machine 1.85 meters makes the golf-shaped window be at a perfect height!

Shapes, shapes, shapes…

Nautilus shell. Wanting to maintain a level of abstraction my busy time schedule and limited mathematical knowledge I chose to inspire the curve of the arcade on a nautilus shell due to its visual looping shape. 

To design the body, you should have a reference image with which you sketch on top of, so you follow the shape of the shell. Apart from the specific curve shape you can make the “outside” of the arcade the shape you like. I chose to have a simple contrasting design by just making it rectangular and bulky. 

Points

The whole motivation for this arcade (besides practicing inexistent golfing skills) is to earn points. And how does that work in this arcade? Well, a combination of strength, precision and luck can help you score in one of the many holes found in at the end of the loop. 

The steps of this part of the design are listed below. You can also help yourself with the photos. 

1. Add the plane/block to the body’s sketch.
2. Once extruded, create a sketch on the plane. If it doesn’t let you, you can create an offset plane and do a sketch there. 
3. Add the holes, taking into consideration the size and position of the holes. Don’t forget to add a spice of chaos!

Bear in mind that the diameter of each hole will make it easier to score, so, the smaller holes should have a bigger reward than the bigger holes.

Additional parts of the body

Let’s leave the aesthetics aside and provide some functionality to this design! We need to add: 

Rails: this arcade would be too challenging if the design didn’t have rails! Therefore, you should add rails to each side of the path. You can do this by creating another sketch and modifying it to add rails. You can see a picture of the rails attached to this step. 

Justice walls: this weirdly named aspect of the arcade are some holed panels which ensure that the person playing the game doesn’t just stick their arm and score the highest point. You can do this in the same sketch as the rails feature. You can, again, see the justice walls in an image below. 

Golf shaped glass.

To improve the design and see where and what you score I included a glass, which I decided to shape it into a golf ball (sphere). I did this by creating a spherical form, deleting half of it, and shaping it into the correct dimensions. 

Point display.

You can also include a tiny rectangular tv where you can see the points scores. I would do a separate body and then just join it to the machine as components in the final step.

Golf stick holder:

Okay! Let’s give our floating golf stick a place to rest. This part of the design is totally and should be adapted to your needs and resources. Of course, if you intend to have more than one sticks your design must differ from mine, but don’t hesitate to take my minimalistic golf stick holder piece as inspiration. 

I believe the true essence and functionality of the piece can be seen through the photos I have attached below. This is why I am going to skip detailing the piece, how it works, …etc. 

Materials

This area of the project will depend on the context where the machine is going to be placed and the preferences of the owner of the machine. 

The main materials I chose were:

• Green fabric: for the path the golf ball was going to travel, just like in the billiards. The green fabric is below the grass decal.
• Aluminum: to give the design an arcade looks which I have seen in other arcade machines (at least in Spain).
• Light Bamboo: this material was chosen mainly because it looks clean, inviting and I haven’t seen it used until now. We want innovation!
• Plastic Glass: this material is, of course, see-through and doesn’t break like normal glass. 
• Decals and paint

Following on the clean appearance I want to give the arcade machine I decided to use white paint on the sides of the machine and added a golfer on one of the sides.

You can take my design as inspiration, but I invite you to make your own design and choose your own colors since it could easily turn out better than mine and perhaps a green color could suit it best. 

In this section I am going to include 2 modifications which could make the design even more cool, which I didn’t have time to make.

• The machine can be designed to include more than one person games for you to be able to play with friends. 
• In the part of the actual design where there is a plane with the different holes for points you could add little walls which make the ball bump, bounce, or change trajectory. This could make the arcade more interesting and increase the level of luck you need to have to earn the biggest number of tickets possible.

I would love to see any suggestions and ideas in the comments!

Throughout this projects you will improve on your Fusion 360 skills as you will get to practice creating sketches on planes and faces, as well as creating forms. With this project you can practice your commitment and perseverance in a project, because if you are like me, it is difficult to fully finish a project since you are overflown with ideas and want to make them all reality.

Furthermore, you will also explore the world of arcade machines and the infinite possibilities. There is an arcade machine for every hobby, waiting to be made. 

I hope I have inspired you to take this project even further and revolutionize the arcade machine market in golf.  

Thank you so much for your time! 

Sorry if there are any mistakes in the intructable english is not my first language.