[ratchet clicks] [marbles hitting vibraphone and drums in a chaotic way] Hey everybody, Martin here, and today I'm assembling the new pressure gate for the Marble Machine X. And it consists of all these intricate looking plywood pieces. In CAD this design looks like this. And, I made two live streams were I CAD-ed this design on the Wintergatan 2 youtube channel.
And it was so great because I'm really learning so much from the chat. Especially I found out that cutting marble paths is easier with the pipe command than with sweeps. And… really… it's so fun to make the live streams, because it's like I'm Neo in Matrix, and the chat is like the cable into my brain that teaches me CAD karate [laughs].
After two long live streams, I had this design, and now we can finally see if
it works when I put it together. When I'm designing these multi-layered
plywood assemblies, I'm trying to make all the parts self-locating. So I'm using these screws to make sure that all parts in this plywood sandwich end up, and line up, on a good spot. So, in the middle pieces of the
plywood, the holes are larger, so the threads are not completely
interacting with these parts. And in the last part the holes are smaller, so the threads of the wood screw
is getting a good bite in the end of the sandwich. And it goes together really quick and nicely actually. [marble rolling] [marble rattling, then drops on table] [marble rattling, then falls on floor] [marble rolling, then drops on table] When I use wood glue in this assembly, I'm only
glueing the pieces to the left side of the assembly. So I can still totally open the whole
assembly with the wood screws, it's not glued all together.
So when I made this design,
there has been a lively debate if this window here on the side is too big or not. And what is fun, is that even without that piece… the marble is trapped. [marble rattling] Almost trapped. [marble rattling, then drops on table] So if I wanted this much visibility,
I could just actually extend this and this a little bit.
And we totally see the marbles all the way. But for now let's put these on. Look at that angle in the front…
that's pretty cool. Same on the other side. [marble drops on steel plate]
Hoo, perfect! Oh yeah. So the marbles comes out
much tighter to each other here than what they enter here. So this marble path is a 3D
marble path, it's not in 2D. Shoutout to everyone who followed
the livestreams when I CAD-ed these parts! This was a Majora mask once upon a time, not anymore.
This is a PMMA holder, and that is
screwed on from the front side here. Very happy with this design. [drilling noises] [ratchet clicks] The purpose of this whole design is to create a module that I can copy nineteen times on the
Marble Machine X with the same design. And in this module I have incorporated
a very important feature. It takes care of the pressure of the marble queue. The accumulated weight of the marble queue builds up a pretty strong force. And this zig-zag pattern, inspired
by Rossero's prototype video, is meant to take care of that. [prototype clicks, marbles drops] Baaaaaaaww… It's effortless… [prototype clicks, marble drops, two times] There is more than meets the eye
involved in this design. So, I explained in the CAD livestream
how the marble position in the closed state is calculated very specially. Because we want the marbles to fall
into the zig-zag in the open position.
And that's excactly what's happening now. You see the bottom marble is riding
on the lower three millimeter thing, and this is the moment when all the pressure… is taken care of by the zig-zag geometry. And then when we close again…
[marble drops] the queue end up in this half-state. [marble drops] It takes more force to open the gate, but in this direction the Marble Machine X is strong, it's the programming wheel pulling the gate open. To close the gate we have only a spring,
and the Marble Machine X is weaker. [prototype clicks, marbles drop] The fact that these three marbles are not
feeding in this 90 degree configuration, is by design, is not a problem,
because there will always be more marble on top, in the Marble Machine X. There's a slight inflation in me saying that this is the coolest plywood parts I ever made.
[chuckles] But I think this is the coolest plywood parts ever made. Started with these prototypes that did not work…
And then… I checked out a good
geometry for the marbles… And then I turned the whole design on it's side, and made this plywood monster. Look how pleased Wilson is with this result! [prototype clicks, marbles drop on Wilson] I'm going to put this part on the Marble
Machine X, to see how it works in context, but first I just want to show you quickly
how I CNC-machined these parts. I started on the backside with these
two millimeter small grooves, which will be the pilot holes for the screws
that hold the PMMA holders later. So I really love to have that, kind of, precision, in the pilot holes, made by the CNC machine. And now I could remove the part and use these dowel pins, or, broken end mills, and flip the part 180, and then
locate it with high accuracy into the exact same spot, and then
machine the other side.
And then begin machining on the other
side. So, it's a few extra steps, but it's actually not that complicated. I have a brand new ball cutter,
it makes SUPER smooth marble paths. It's sharp and new and the angle is meant to
not cause wood fray, and that really worked. I think I made like 11 different G-code fast for this, and it's already summer here. [laughs] My Swedish family don't believe it
so I have to show them some flowers. [sanding noise] Ninja! Hey Ninja, help a youtuber
out with algorithm, will ya? Apparently not. So this is important… of course the cat is more important, but also important is this cut
I'm making manually here. I'm removing three millimeters from the gate, and that is to achieve that perfect marble position.
[marble hits snare drum, seven times] [ratchet clicks] [marbles chaotically drop on the
vibraphone and thesnare drum] That was the first and last song
ever played with this gate. [laughs] [ratchet clicks] [another series of marble drops
on the vibraphone and the drums] [laughing] [clapping]… So epic. That's the last piece of music THIS PART ever played. [laughs]
[twang] And here's the big point with this video: I'm now
able to remove this custom plywood labyrinth, which earlier took care of the marble pressure, but it had a custom design for
each of the 38 channels, which now I'm replacing with a module
that I can copy-paste across the whole Marble Machine X.
That is better design. [mallet whirls] [whack!] One thing that I dislike about this design is how it attaches to the machine,
it's through these two holes. I need to transfer them from the old to the new one, because I couldn't make these
holes on the CNC machine. So the way I transfer them is to locate this part
with clamps from all directions, so then I'm using a six millimetres drill,
which is the same size as the hole, to just make a center divot. So now we should have our divots. [phew] Then in the divots I'm using a smaller drill, five millimeter. And lastly an M6 tap. This does work in plywood. I should correct myself: this works in
high quality BB grade birch plywood.
The construction plywood you're used to
through the construction stores, is not comparable to this material. I often get quite a lot of pushback for putting metal machine screws… threads… into wood. And I would just like to throw some
fire on those flames. [chuckles] If your gut reaction to this is to say "that won't work", "those kind of threads are not meant for wood", you're not really thinking about it
in a first principles way, because, you have to look at it: what holding power do we need for this special application, right? Here, I put a metal thread cross-grain
of the plywood. That is much stronger. Here, I had to put it alongside the grain. I'm crinching a little bit more on these screws, and nothing at all on these. [chuckles] I'm gonna give you half a point if you thought
putting the threads along the grain is little… looks a little suspicious. You have to really look at it from case-to-case basis. And in this case, it works great. Okay, so this is real moment of truth for the plywood gate.
[two marbles rolling in pipe] Here we go. [marble hits the snare drum] Opening, no problem. [click] Oooo, it closes, no problem. [marble hits kick drum, three times] Okay. This design is epic. There is so much
going on in this thing [laughs]. And… I'm really proud of it, I'm really
proud of the input from the community, Rossero's amazing prototype videos, yeah… its working. It's working! [marble hits snare drum, two times] I just want to say that there's
more marble pressure into this, than it will ever be on the Marble
Machine X, because this pipe is angled in a way, that creates
maximum marble pressure. So, its perfect, the snare is the toughest
one because the arm is so long, so the leverage is bad, so… can it do it for the snare, it can do it everywhere else. [marble hits snare drum, four times] In the old design I had to use an afterthought
with extra parts to hold the PMMA pipes securely.
So this design has fixed that,
and gotten rid of a lot of parts. So note now, when the gate is closed,
that the marbles is not in the correct position. And now… [marble drops on snare drum] Did you see how the marbles fell down?
Three millimeters on this lower gate. And this friction is nothing! [click] [marble drops on snare drum, two times] I love it, and I also don't really love it.
[chuckles] I'm really proud of… how this ended… and… how the livestreams resulted in
something that really works. And… I'm really happy how I could incorporate
the pressure gate from Rossero's prototype, and kind of mesh that with my previous gate design, into something that is much better
than what we had before. There's a lot of plywood parts, quite a heavy
machining to make 19 of these sub-assemblies, that's not a big issue actually.
I kind of dislike that you don't see the marbles more. Like, if we do this times 19 on the front here, it's kind of hard to see the marbles there, kind of obscure there, but you can't have it all. And, I promised to go for functionality over estethics, so I might have to buy this… perhaps not… we'll see! Thank you everyone for following this crazy project! I know there is a huge part of the audience
wondering what I'm actually doing.
[laughs] Why is the machine not finished? And… I'm iterating like… SpaceX you know… it's just
that I'm on starship serial number… 250. They explode one after the other,
// Subtitled by Wintergatan Writers.// but I'm going to stick the landing one day.
//Join our team on www.amara.org //.