Marbles Track Machine

My idea to keep me busy during the upcoming winter is to build a Marbles Track Machine. Never built one before neither have any idea of the tricks involved but that’s the challenge.

Got some YouTube videos to get intial idea of what’s involved and its amazing of the machines some have built, even one guy made a functioning clock, all with marbles.

I understand these machines use “switches” to direct the marbles to different paths, elevators to raise the marbles for endless loops and perhaps many more details.

Anyone knows where I can find more info on these machines?

Here is one place to start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

And

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-nU21YgXTg

And watch the rest of the series.

Wow.....amazing but in my age I dont think I will live long enough to make one

Thanks

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Anyone knows where I can find more info on these machines?

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No, but YouTube and the comments section is a good place to start searching. Anyone offering help with these contraptions is likely to have videos.

Elevators will need motors to have any reasonable runtime, or at least I believe a weight driven elevator isn't practical. The more purely mechanical bits the more I like watching but that's personal taste. You could really go to town on the electronic control side of things if that's your interest. That's an area of know-how separate from the machine itself.

Thanks for your time, I have no problem with the electronics but what I’m after is someone had built one to learn from his experience. Anyway I guess I will learn as I go along

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I’m after is someone had built one to learn from his experience

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Then go where builders post videos.
A few minutes on YouTube finds this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/user/motleymdg/about
which leads to this
https://www.rollingballsculpture.com/how-to-make-rbs/
just one example, I'm not even sure if that's if that's the type of "Marble Track Machine" you seek.

Thanks for the links. Most of us can build a marble machine but the idea is to make one of interest. In the following link this guy build an amazing machine which uses just kinetic energy to make it go for 24hrs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNipg3AVCG4

Yikes, that combination of engineering+imagination can not be taught imo. The elevator/'escapement' (weight energy release) must have taken much trial and error even with the calculations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVQ-e0L0QU8
I've added 2 more links for your amusement. Good luck with your project.
507 Mechanical Movements
A regular contributor on GrabCad:
https://grabcad.com/library/a-questi...e-wooden-toy-1

Thanks for the links, very interesting