Awesome Marbles

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are plenty of kits out there that let you build a tabletop marble run, but Daniel de Bruin shows you how you can build your own marble track using a spool of picture hanging wire, some solder, and a few household tools. Daniel previously built a room-size marble machine as a demonstration of how economies work.

Denha shows off a mesmerizing machine that’s designed to produce a variety of soothing sounds as dozens of metal spheres move their way through its maze of metal tracks, spinning wheels, and moving stairsteps. It sounds sort of like a perpetual Pachinko machine.

Remix artist William Maranci did a great job combining the warm and inviting sounds of Wintergatan’s musical marble machine with Gorillaz’ track Feel Good Inc. As its musician and inventor cranks it up, Maranci has to fool with the BPM a bit, but that’s part of the fun.

Jelle’s Marble Runs kicks off a new racing series in which colorful marbles compete for dominance on a twisty and turny race track, as hundreds of spherical spectators look on from tiny stands. So pick a marble, and cheer on your favorite.

It may not play music like Wintergatan’s marble-powered musical instrument, but we still enjoyed listening to the soothing sounds and watching the hypnotic movements of this wooden marble machine, which serves as an example of the modules you can buy from its creator.

These fun-looking marble tracks mount on magnetic surfaces like some whiteboard and fridges, letting you create Line Rider-style courses that take full advantage of gravity. Available tricks will include a spinner, bell, launcher, catapult, a motorized lift and more. Launching soon on Kickstarter.

Puzzle maker Ravensburger’s kits are a blast for kids and kids at heart, letting you easily assemble fast-moving and complex marble runs. Modular components encourage experimentation, and include loops, magnetic cannons, and other tricks. The starter set comes with 122 pieces, while we’d go for the 240-piece XXL set.