For my final hackathon project I wanted to revisit the failed marble run from January and give it a second chance. I was so close to a working project on the first try that the bitter taste of defeat never quite left my mouth, and this time I was victorious.

The main contribution to my success was re-imagining the track and designing it to be more easily constructed and tweaked. The new design was of course made in Fusion and consisted of a straight track with two walls on either side, and a corner piece with walls on two sides that featured slots to attach a small piece at a 45 degree angle. This new design helped me make plan right off the bat and not waste time messing with a doomed strategy (RIP copper wire track).

Here is my first picture about 45 minutes into the night. I laser cut and 3d printed the main body and step pieces before the hackathon, and cut the track pieces, camshaft, and cam pieces during the event.

Here I have fully assembled and tested the cam system and it works like a dream. Now is the fun part of designing and assembling the track with the building pieces I designed beforehand. I spent a lot of time here waiting for an opportunity to get on the laser cutter and then spent a decent amount of time hot gluing the individual sections together for smoother assembly on the final project. The wall parts of the corner pieces needed some mid-hackathon adjustment, so that also took some time to figure out and re-cut.

Here is the track mid-construction. I wanted to make a really fun track that had more twists and turns, however I ran into the problem of making a consistent yet substantial slope, so for the sake of reliability and simplicity I just went for a straight run back to the bottom. The cam is the more interesting part anyways.

Here is the first full test after finished assembly. The balls will sometimes get a bad bounce off a corner piece or run into a wall wrong and need a little help getting back down on average succeed in making it all the way to the bottom about 4 out of 5 times, which is good enough for me.

Here is a picture of the new track design in the Fusion environment.