Most Christmas ornaments just hang there and look pretty. [Sean Hodgins] decided to whip up something altogether fancier and more mechanical. It’s a real working marble machine that hangs from the tree!
The build is simple enough, beginning with a translucent Christmas ornament shell readily available from most craft stores. Inside, a small motor spins a pinion, which turns a larger gear inside the body. As the larger gear spins, magnets embedded inside pick up steel balls from the base of the ornament and lift them up to the top. As they reach their zenith, they’re plucked off by a scoop, and then they roll down a spiral inside. As for power, [Sean] simply handled that with a couple of wires feeding the motor from a USB power bank. Just about any small battery pack would do fine.
The build is beautiful to watch and to listen to, with a gentle clacking as the balls circulate around. Files are on MakerWorld for the curious. We’ve featured some great Christmas decorations before, too. Video after the break.
xmas is early this year
hah i’m a ‘no support never no way no how’ guy with my 3d printer and fast forwarding through him clipping a ton of extra plastic off of the spiral really sent me. so many different ways to approach this hobby!
but how would i do it? and it’s an easy question to answer…if i had to do the spiral, i would really be challenged to come up with anything remotely workable, short of making a mountain with the spiral around the outside of it. but if i thought about it for a moment i would say to myself that spiral is the boringest of all marble falls (not a criticism of his work, but rather a description of mine) and i’d invent something else that is more printable. once again showing how the constraints we face are often the most important part of the creative process
I have a couple of ornaments that encompass motion scenes in a clear sphere, so I would like to make one of these for my tree.
I have yet to jump into 3D printing. Would resin printing make that shape without supports?
The spiral is a representation of a Christmas tree. It would be interesting to see what other holiday-relevant shapes people could come up with.
I wonder if you could print it flat and then heat it up to make it cone-shaped?
Maybe print it flat in TPU or any other flexible filament, then pull it into shape an fasten it somehow at the top an the bottom.
I think the issue is that the spiral ramp covers itself. To do something like that it’d have to be tighter and thus wouldn’t be so long and winding
I’m sure it’s all clever and cute, but it’s really hard to take a guy seriously when he wears a baseball cap backwards, and indoors. Especially when he makes a point to make us notice he uses Blackwings. It’s all just so affected.
Very cute idea. The track spiral could probably be made flexible enough so it can be printed flat and then stretched into the tree/cone shape. No supports necessary and it would be much smoother.
I also worry about the balls magnetizing and sticking together over time.
Awesome. one of my first large 3D prints was a marble machine. Now i’ll be definitley getting the kids to do this for Christmas. I recon the spiral could print well in resin!