My Challenge to Make a Marble Run Machine - I Like 90 Degrees

I completed connecting three rails of my marble run machine yesterday. This time work was arduous. It's because the angles of each rail are all different.

Stainless balls can rotate on a rail of 3 degrees for sure. About at least 2.7 degrees on a wood rail can rotate. It depends on the material of the rail, of course.

Therefore, I set the angle where the rail that balls don't need to run fast at 3 degrees. However, the next rail to be connected to the 3 degrees rail had to be kept at 9 degrees. It was challenging to cut the surface to a certain degree. Furthermore, I made the wrong length of the rail. One mistake caused the other mistakes, and inside my head was chaos.

How much easier would it have been if these angles were 90 degrees?
I love 90 degrees!
I want to say, "Who designed such a machine?!"
I know. I did. Before I started making it, my husband told me whether I really wanted to make such a complicated marble run machine. I thought it wasn't easy at the time, but I didn't take it so seriously. I've made it this far, and I have no choice but to continue.

The words: sin, cos, and tan were popping into my head meaninglessly. Besides me, who was confused and stuck, my husband gave a simple answer with a calculator.

I remember one teacher who taught a carpentry course at TAFE  (Technical and further education) couldn't calculate the angle of an arched bridge, and he asked my husband for help several years ago. He calculated the angles for the teacher. Since then, he has been dubbed a professor. Should I call him a professor as well? Anyway, three rails were connected somehow.

I made brackets to keep the rails. Those brackets were made from the off-cuts of burr puzzles. You never know what might be useful, you know?

 

 

 

 

Here is what I completed yesterday.

There is a hairpin turn right-hand side, and after that, there is a wavy rail. The wavy rail's angle is a bit steep. Otherwise, the balls cannot be rolled. The balls after passing through the wavy rail, go to the start point, and they are caught by gears and go up to the top of the machine.

I've completed the ball-rifting system and the rails around. From now on, I'm going to design the rails. This is the most fun part. I want to make lots of fun movements.