● Triple Splitter

The bars of the Triple Splitter sort the marbles correctly, but I still need to:

  • make enough space for the small marbles to pass under the bar and down the Little Wiggly Track.
  • make a track to catch the medium marbles when they fall through the triple splitter.

 ● Outer Spiral

Feeding into the Triple Splitter, the Outer Spiral will circumnavigate the entire track. Large and medium marbles will roll around the entire track in a clockwise motion (as seen from the top), and small marbles will feed into the triple splitter from the other direction, though I don’t know exactly how far around the track they will go.

One idea I just now had is to allow the small marbles to circumnavigate the track on an inner loop, going the opposite direction.

Right now Reversible Guy is waiting for the glue to dry while he is holding the first support that will hold up the Outer Spiral.

Though the stand-in Outer Spiral is a polygon of sorts, I plan to make the real spiral smoother somehow.

 ● Lower(*) Zig Zag

Next to the triple splitter, I have a very narrow space to allow the small marbles to go down to feed into the small marble resting area from the other direction off of the Little Wiggly Track.

(*) Though there are not currently any plans for an upper zig zag, I guess there might have to be one later in the construction.

Past plans

  • Make a stand-in Outer Spiral. I originally tried to do large segments of the spiral with long bamboo sticks, but they split while being curved. I ended up using shorter bamboo skewers, which make it more of a polygon than a smooth spiral.

  • Make a triple splitter. The trickiest bit was getting the spacing correct. As of about August 2018, the spacing is correct.

  • Have the bearing fly in like a helicopter. This was done by suspending it from a broom handle mounted above the whole set.

  • Have the stage on a bearing. This allows me to easily reach the far side of the stage to pose the characters / glue stuff / etc while making the animation.