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Awesome Marbles

Tea-Making Marble Machine

Tea-Making Marble Machine

Inspired by Colin Furze and his tea-making Rube Goldberg machine, engineer James Bruton wanted to make his own overly complicated contraption for fixing drinks. Bruton’s TEA-800 beverage dispenser is triggered by a large ball bearing that activates various parts of the machine. It gradually moves a mug into position and fills it with hot water, brews a tea bag, and adds milk.

Fixing the Marble Machine Clock

Fixing the Marble Machine Clock

A little while back, maker Ivan Miranda engineered a very cool clock that tells time using marbles. But his kinetic sculpture is too slow to tell the time accurately. He’s since made numerous refinements to the design of his clock, and it’s now faster and smoother, so it can properly update its digits once per minute. It’s totally awesome but ridiculously loud.

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Building a Giant Marble Machine Clock

Building a Giant Marble Machine Clock

Maker Ivan Miranda wanted to build a mechanical clock that uses marbles to show the time. He created an elevator that lifts marbles and drops them into a track. He used light sensors to detect white marbles and solenoids to release the right ones to display dot-matrix digits. It’s a work in progress, but it’s already impressive. Watch part one of the build here.

Creating Vintage Machine-made Marbles

Creating Vintage Machine-made Marbles

We’ve seen how cheap mass-produced marbles are made. Now let’s take a look at a small West Virginia factory that combines machinery with glass art to create its unique marbles. Stephen Bahr captured this delightful behind-the-scenes look at Dave’s Appalachian Swirls as it creates a batch of its prized custom marbles.

Marble Maze in a Cube

Marble Maze in a Cube

LittleBall Creations makes beautiful marble mazes from bent and soldered copper wire. Here, they show off one of their self-contained mazes that sits inside of a cube. The marble rolls from one end of the track to the other when the cube is flipped over. If you’re interested in buying their work, contact them on Facebook.

Marble Night City Marble Run

Marble Night City Marble Run
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ROKR’s intricate marble run makes a great desktop plaything. The crank-driven elevator wheel keeps marbles flowing through the endless maze, which includes multiple ramps, a spiral funnel, and other fun obstacles along the way. You’ll have fun building the 294-piece laser-cut kit too.

Aladdin Marble Machine

Aladdin Marble Machine

David Scott of Enbiggen is known for making virtual marble machines inspired by pop culture. This musical machine celebrates the world of Aladdin with an enchanting rendition of A Whole New World performed on xylophone bars.

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Marbolous Desktop Marble Track

Marbolous Desktop Marble Track

This desktop plaything is a tiny marble track under a dome. It’s a great distraction from work and stress as its marbles climb to the top and roll down its track with the push of a lever. Its mechanism uses no electricity, and it’s built with quality parts including glass, metal, and cork. Measures 10.5″ H x 6.3″ Diameter.

Incredibly Long Marble Run

Incredibly Long Marble Run

Scott’s Marble Runs shows off a truly impressive build that start outside of his house, then winds its way inside through countless bends and turns. It takes a full six minutes for a marble to complete the entire course, which he built using Quercetti Skyrail marble tracks.

Marble Conjuring Machine

Marble Conjuring Machine

Mathematician Yosuke Ikeda created this tricky machine which uses a mirror to make it appear that there is one more marble on its turntable than there really is. Except when the mirror is moved out of the way, another marble really is there.

Epic Cardboard Marble Run

Epic Cardboard Marble Run

We always enjoy watching the spheres go round and round on marble runs. They’re usually made wood, metal, or plastic, but DanCreator made his marble run out of his favorite material, cardboard. We’re impressed with its complexity and the precision of its ramps and curves. It took him roughly two months to build, and the effort shows.

Can’t Help Falling in Love with Marbles

Can’t Help Falling in Love with Marbles

We love Acoustic Trench’s soothing kalimba cover of Can’t Help Falling in Love. With the help of Cinema 4D and OctaneRender, motion designers TheCritters created a photorealistic CG marble maze that syncs up perfectly with the tune. We can only imagine how much work it took to get everything to line up perfectly.

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Tiny Marble Machine

Tiny Marble Machine

Artist Daniel de Bruin is an expert at making metal tracks for marble machines. He’s taught us how to make our own, and even made a room-sized marble track. Now, he’s downsized his efforts, creating the tiniest marble course we’ve ever seen, using a custom drive mechanism, 0.6mm wire, and a 5mm wide ball bearing.

Giant Gravitrax Marble Run

Giant Gravitrax Marble Run

Gravitrax marble tracks look like fun, but you’d need to invest a lot of money to build something as impressive as the course that Jelle’s Marble Runs put together. They divided the track into four distinct areas, from soothing single-marble action to a cacophonous 1000-marble avalanche. It must have taken days to set this all up.

Wind-up Marble Machine

Wind-up Marble Machine

Most of the marble machines we’ve seen are either powered by gravity or motors. But builder Daniel de Bruin shows us how he made a mechanism that stores up energy using a spring, carrying marbles to the top of a tiny bent-wire maze using a Ferris wheel of sorts.

Wall-Mounted Marble Coaster

Wall-Mounted Marble Coaster

JBV Creative designed this interactive marble coaster that can be wall-mounted. To build the maze, he created 3D models in Solidworks, then rendered the components on a 3D printer. Once it’s loaded up with marbles, it continuously recirculates with the turn of its crank. You can buy the STL files to make your own on JBL’s website.

Infinity Trax Magnetic Marble Runs

Infinity Trax Magnetic Marble Runs
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DeepMake sells these modular marble runs that stick to metal surfaces like a refrigerator. The pieces are made from laser-cut wood, and include ramps, loops, spinners, and stairsteps which you can configure any way you’d like. They come in 12-, 24-, 48-, and 96-piece sets, and are also working on a archimedes screw lift.

Ski Jump Marble Machine

Ski Jump Marble Machine

Builder Ben Tardif created this impressive motorized marble machine which carries hundreds of ball bearings up an elevator, then rolls them down a miniature ski jump, where they make their way back to the bottom to repeat the feat. You can check out the build process if you’re interested in seeing it come together.

Great Wall of Marbles

Great Wall of Marbles

Inspired by the incredible manmade feat known as the Great Wall of China, the guys at Murmiland built a marble run that looks like a miniature version of the world wonder. The only difference is their version measures just 15 meters long, less than a millionth of the length of the real deal. Oh, and nobody died building this one.

Marble Karaoke

Marble Karaoke

We’ve seen lots of videos where virtual objects have been synced up to perfectly match with music. But 5MadMovieMakers managed to do it in real life by building an elongated marble track and perfectly timing the speed of the ball rolling so it lines up with song lyrics. The track is “Take Your Time” by EmCee.

How Glass Marbles Are Made

How Glass Marbles Are Made

Sino Sales & Support presents a brief and wonderfully satisfying look at a factory in China where rows of machines crank out millions of glass marbles each year. The soothing sound of thousands of rolling marbles should be an option on every white noise machine. Skip to 0:38.

The Factory Concrete Marble Maze

The Factory Concrete Marble Maze

Material Immaterial Studio presents a unique piece of interactive tabletop art. Cast from concrete, the diminutive Factory features design elements of Brutalist industrial architecture and incorporates a rolling ball maze. Just roll the tiny steel bearings from its tower, and enjoy the show! Measures 8.07″ W x 4.33″ D x 6.29″ H.

Endless LEGO Marble Machine

Endless LEGO Marble Machine

Jason Allemann of JK Brickworks is an expert at building machines using LEGO bricks. In this clip, he shows off a nifty marble machine he created that uses sloped ramps and a motorized elevator to keep the little LEGO basketballs rolling in perpetuity.

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