Tabletop Foosball Table Using Hex Shafts

My group and I had to design and fabricate a kind of board game or piece of furniture for a school project. We decided to build a tabletop plywood foosball table(kind of a mixture of both). Instead of normal circular rods, our foosball table utilizes steel hex shafts and hex accessories to make it work! It is themed and dedicated to our High School's FRC robotics team: 3324 the Metrobots.

Materials

• Plywood
• 4x 32” Hex Shafts(½” Width)
• 8x ½” Hex Bearings
• 8x ½” Hex Shaft Collars
• 12x 3D printed Foosball Players
• 3D printed Spacers(That fit ½” Width Shafts)
• x8 3" Long Spacers
• x8 1/2" Long Spacers
• 4x or 8x 3D printed Handles
• 3D printed 1.5”-2” diameter ball
• WD-40
• Wood Screws
• Super glue
• Wood glue
• Spray paint

Tools/Machines

• 3D Printer
• Drill
• Drill press
• 1” Diameter Drill Bit
• Bandsaw
• Hammer/mallet
• Metal File
• Tablesaw
• Jigsaw
• Sander

Where we bought our shafts: https://www.mcmaster.com/shafts/easy-to-machine-1215-carbon-steel-hex-bars/

We started our foosball table project by brainstorming and thinking of things to build. We also tried to think of different uses for what we were building or problems we wanted to address. We discussed what we wanted to do and decided to do a foosball table. It functions as both a piece of furniture and a game! 

We liked this project because it was realistic for us to do: a tabletop foosball table is small and portable. This also allowed us to utilize the hex shaft accessories, tools, 3D printers, and plywood that were already present in our school’s shop. We also thought using hex shafts instead of the normal circular foosball rods where the players are attached was pretty unique and would reduce the need for ordering materials. After sketching potential elements of the foosball table on paper, we decided on what we wanted to include and started cadding.

The next thing we did was create a CAD of our foosball table in Onshape. Our group created the CAD of the robot foosball players and handles. We then cadded the table’s walls and base and imported the hex bearings and shafts. Finally, we combined all of the parts together into an assembly. Note that a few elements of our fabricated foosball table ended up being different from the CAD(the goal size, part of the wall height, and the corner blocks). 

Link to our CAD: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/76742f4781030e75de15d611/w/a591da5ef8293b25a01f5110/e/7d5a54e43a5fe9607cb71c12?renderMode=0&uiState=63387e62aeb5183d6daededa

First, we had to cut the plywood to the right dimensions. The thickness of our plywood was .75”. The base was made to be 2.5 feet by 1.5 feet. The two long wall pieces were 2.5 feet long and 6” tall. The two shorter wall pieces(where the goals go) are 16.5” long and 6 inches tall. Our group marked out these 5 pieces on the plywood in pencil and then cut them out with a table saw. We then sanded the edges a bit. 

Dimensions in Inches:

Base - 30"' x 18"

Long Walls(x2) - 30" x 6"

Short Walls(x2) - 16.5" x 6"

Next, we marked and cut the 1” diameter bearing holes into the 2 long wall pieces. We made four holes per long wall piece. The center of every bearing hole from 3.25” high from the bottom of the wall. The first hole is 5” away from the left side of the wall. The next hole is 5.5” to the right of the first hole. The two other holes were made in the same way but from the right side of the wall. We marked the center of the bearing holes and then cut them out using a drill press.

My group realized that the constant shifting of rods during a game of foosball might knock out the bearings from the wood. So we decided to put wood glue in each of the holes and around the bearings to make sure that they do not fall out. We put the wood glue around the bearings and then used a mallet to put them in the holes.

To make the project more aesthetically pleasing, we decided to decorate and paint the base/bottom of the foosball table. We simply covered the base with blue spray paint(unique from the normal green base of foosball tables) and waited for it to dry.

For cutting the goals into the short pieces, we just measured and traced the goals in pencil. The semi-circle shape of the goal was eyeballed and we used a jigsaw to cut along the pencil markings.

Now we could screw together all of our pieces to form the wooden frame of the foosball table. First, we lined up all of the walls on top of the base piece(the bearings should be on the outside and at the right height). The long walls go on the long sides of the base board and the two short ones should fit in between the long ones. The way we put them together was through screwing through the bottom of the base and into the walls.

After lining them up, we flipped over all of the pieces and drilled pilot holes through the base into the wall(to prevent the wood from cracking). We then drilled all of the screws into the pilot holes. We put 4 screws on each long wall and 2 screws on each short wall. Our group made sure to spread the screws evenly(at least one on each end of the wall) to strongly secure the walls .

To really sell the robot theme, we decided to paint a gigantic Metrobot(our FRC team’s logo) onto the base! First, we measured and marked the very center of the base/field. Then one of my group members drew a picture of the robot around it. Afterward, we put masking tape over some of the lines to stop the paint from hiding the robot drawing. Finally, we used red spray paint and spray painted the robot picture and a little around it to provide a fancy red outline.

Our group then gathered all of our printed materials. The prints were done in PLA filament. We printed 6 red and 6 blue foosball players, as well as 8 white handles. We also printed a 2” diameter ball and a 1.5” diameter ball. For the spacers, we just used a random collection of 3D printed spacers that were stored in our shop’s spacer drawer.

Our group ordered two 6 feet steel shafts to put the foosball people on. We needed four 32” shafts, so we marked where all of our shafts would be cut and had them cut. We used the table saw to cut them.

Since the shafts will go back and forth through the bearing a lot during the use of the foosball table, we needed a way to make it easy to push the shafts through. So we tried a multitude of different things. We used a metal file on both the inside of the bearings and the edges of the shafts. We also used a ton of WD-40 on the bearings and shafts. The WD-40 especially made sliding the shafts through the bearings smooth.

Finally, we put together our shafts with the foosball people in them! We pushed a shaft through the first bearing and then added all of the accessories onto it. We put the accesories on in this order: 

1: Tiny Spacer

2: Shaft Collar

3: Foosball Player

4: Long Spacer

5: Foosball Player

6: Long Spacer

7: Foosball Player

8: Shaft Collar

9: Tiny Spacer 

The tiny spacers were around ½” long and the longer spacers were about 3.067” long. The shaft collars were for holding the players in place and preventing the shafts from going too far through the bearing. The tiny spacers were for preventing the shaft collars from getting stuck in the bearing hole(we found out that ramming the shaft collar with enough force into the wall would cause it to go a tiny bit inside the bearing hole and get stuck). The size of the long spacers made it so that the foosball players were not too close to one another. 

After we made the accessories symmetrical and the leftover shaft length on both sides of the table were about even, we locked in the shaft collars. Then we just repeated these steps for the 3 other shafts!

For some final touches, we super glued every single handle onto the ends of the shafts. We did spray paint two of the handles, but we decided that leaving the rest white was fine. To make the shafts that had a little resistance slide better, we constantly hammered and pushed them back and forth through the bearing(to try to wear down the resistance). We also added a bit more WD-40 on the shafts for good measure. And then we were finished with our foosball table!

Many of the challenges that we faced were ones we encountered during the actual construction of the table. We did accidentally cut two of the wall heights to the wrong length, so that is why they look not even(the wall height wasn’t too off, so we were still able to use it). 

There is also quite a bit of dead space where the foosball players cannot kick the ball(especially in the middle of the field). We were able to address this a bit by making the ball bigger and letting the players move closer to the wall. However, if we had more time, we might have given the foosball players longer legs to kick farther. We could have also spaced the placing of the bearings to cover more space or even try to add 2 extra foosball shafts(we originally thought it wouldn’t have enough space).

The bearing holes were not cut completely accurately, which slightly slanted the shafts and likely made them harder to slide at first. This was very scary at first because we thought that we had to completely redo the long walls(which we didn’t have time for), but we were able to push the shafts through and make the sliding mechanism smooth with WD-40. 

If you try to recreate our project, keeping these things in mind could save you some time! The sliding and kicking of our players work quite well with hex shafts, which we were surprised by. In general, we are very happy with our finished Metrobot-themed project and absolutely recommend using hex shafts and bearings for creating foosball tables!