Our marble mobile wall piece has been in development for some time. All of the basic elements of gravitational entertainment are in place. The next item we want to research is to combat these forces.
How do we raise the marble back to the starting position?
We start by researching how others have solved this challenge in the past. There have been attempts, but none to be flat against a wall. The closest we found is a wall piece that juts out a bit. Not too much, but more than our goals. It’s a super nice innovation.
Check out the youtube video…
He uses the roller chain elevation method in a beautiful build. If you look close you can see a second method of lifting a marble, the circle way. He has a toggle and a levered bucket drop which are really pretty. Check it out and see what other techniques he uses in the descent of each marble.
I’ve started to sketch out the problems I have to solve. The motor, sprockets, chain, little elevator buckets, etc.
We also want to mention the actual marble. It’s very important, eh. In researching the elevation, we found a link to a site specializing in marble retain.
http://www.megaglass.com
In our design, we used a 5/8 router bit, but the marble needs to be smaller than that. We don’t want to buy a bag of bulk marbles and find 2 that are the right size. This site will help us find the exact size of marble we need. Or we will use a bigger router bit. We are flexible that way.