Marble Run Piece for Kids

This is the marble run workpiece project. I first chose to do a surf fin, but that didn’t go to plan, so now, I am working on this marble run workpiece with awesome features in it. For example, a screen that wont let the marble run off the piece (you know how annoying that is). I chose to do this marble run project because I want to see how the kids testing the marble run will observe how the piece works.-

Supplies: 10 x 6 in Plywood with a .35 inch thickness, Wood Glue, 3 in Wood dowels with a .25 inch diameter (Tools: Band saw (vertical), DeWalt drill and Nail gun, Measuring tape, tape, belt sander, 11x8in acryllic

Brainstorm ideas for a marble run from a marble run piece that has been used/created in the past. In our first prototypr we tried to 3d print a loop, but it kept failing.

Sketch out your ideas on a sheet of paper/ Autodesk fusion with dimensions. After that draw dimensions on paper for the cut lengths, sizes, distance between marble run holes, and any other smaller details. We measured the plywood (11.5x6.25in), dowel size and diameter(3in length and .25in diameter), wood side rails (11.25x2in), and wood slides(3.5x1in)

The image on the right is our first attempt of trying to make a 3d-print of our piece, but it didn't end so well. The image on the left shows our first protoype made from wood without proper slide measures and no acryllic screen.

First, we started by cutting the wooden frame out of scratch plywood on the band saw, second we cut wood rails for the side of the frame, then sanded them, then we cut wooden slides the sanded at a 45 degree angle on the belt sander.

Glue the wooden rails with wood glue, then while they are drying, nail them together with a DeWalt nail gun to support the glue drying and connection. We also glued the wood slides but we tried a different method which was adding support while the glue was drying.

These are our prototypes from Step 3, challenges we faced from them were the 3d-prints failing, and dissapearing. (we tried to make a marble run loop but when we began to print it the next day it was gone). Another problem was the wooden slides being too wide of cuts which contributed to the marble falling out and preventing the acrylic from being able to attatch to the wood. I think the 3d print didn't work because of the orientation, or size. One of the biggest issues we had was the dowel placement being slightly off, which meant we had to force the dowel in the marble run, which ended up breaking the dowel from the piece.

We first tested our most recent draft of our project without an acrylic scree, and the marble fell out sometimes, but sometimes made it, but we decided to add an acrylic screen. (Next Step)

We added an acrylic screen to the frame of our project with wood glue, but it didn't hold up, so we tried using hot glue and it seemed to stick together.

To add dowels, draw drill marks for the frame on the marble run's holes, then drill holes with a 1/4 in diameter on the places you marked your holes.

We tested the long term project by hooking up the workpiece’s wooden dowels to the marble run frame’s holes, and from there we dropped the marble from the top of the workpiece and the marble successfully came out the bottom, but we couldn’t get it back. Our final build was probably the most successful out of all of the 3 total we attempted. We could have improved on a little bit more accurate measurements for testing. Problems that we solved were fixing the marble from falling off the workpiece, because in our 1st prototype, we tried printing it with filament, but it didn’t work because of the printing orientation. In our 2nd prototype, we chose to use wood by adding wooden slides to the frame, but that didn’t work either because our measurements of our wooden slides aligned with the frame were off, and the marble kept falling out. In our final design (3rd) we started over, but this time we sanded the slides at an angle to make sure the marble would stay, and we also added a screen we had to cut on the bandsaw to prevent the marble falling out.