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We believe 3D Printing has beautiful applications for kids and grown-ups to make toys or cosplay props. These application can be intricate and complicated mechanisms. They are not only fun to make but also helps you to understand the science behind it. Inspired by Daniel Parker who makes marble machines using traditional techniques we decided to apply 3D Printing to make a marble machine that takes marbles through crazy loops and turns.
Other than being cool to look at and mesmerising for your eyes, the fun lies in creating the marble machine and deciding where the marble will go and how it will get there.
At first glance, it may look relatively simple, but a lot of planning and tweaking had to go into the design process keeping in mind that all parts have to be 3D Printed and support free to avoid any kind of post processing. It took us approximately 2-3 weeks to design the assembly on Onshape and a series of iterations to make a working model of the marble machine.
The whole assembly consists of 34 3D Printed parts, nuts, screws, and a DC motor to provide a rotary mechanism.
The marble starts at the bottom, and goes to the top, and then returns to the bottom, making this trip about 8640 times in 24 hours. Each step lifts the marble back up to the top of the slide in a synchronous manner. Here, the entire process starts all over again and continues so long as you keep turning the CAM shaft.
Printing the PartsWe 3D Printed all the parts on our Indie: The Desktop 3D Printer which will soon be launched on Indiegogo. It is important for us to test complex prints on Indie. Indie has been designed from the grounds up to build parts with reliability and precision. It has injection molded parts, on its gantry system. It uses hardened steel for durability and better duty cycle. It has a enclosed chamber for maintaining the thermal dynamics of the 3D Printed part. The extruder has been designed for increasing the torque in the system without impacting the cost of the machine. The power consumption of Indie is a measly 100 Watts. The filament monitor alerts the user in case of filament grinding or nozzle blocks. Octoprint with Raspberry Pi allows the user to connect with the machine over WiFi. Indie has been built on Open Source technology.
The Files are available to download on Thingiverse and Myminifactory for free. The assembly instructions are available on Instructables, too.
- Thingiverse - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1906656
- Myminifactory - https://www.myminifactory.com/object/the-3d-printed-marble-machine-by-maher-soft-25456
- Instructables - http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Marble-Machine/
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