Magnetic Ball Wall

If you have been to a science center, it is likely you've seen some kind of ball machine or ball wall before.  The basic idea is that you can assemble a pathway for a ball to travel along using some combination of ramps, tubes, funnels, etc.  There are many toys and kits our there from Kinex, Fridgits and many others - just Google "rolling ball machine" and enjoy surfing.

The purpose of this project is to build parts for a rolling ball machine of sorts for a science center.  We have a 4'x15' framed piece of steel sheeting onto which the parts are attached with magnets.  You could do something like this for a large space, your garage or whatever, or just as easily apply these ideas on a smaller scale and do one for your fridge or smaller metal bulletin board.

I will focus most of the instructable on building the main ball-duct part, 8 of which are shown in the picture.

I'd appreciate any ideas and feedback as I expect to tweak this for many months to come.

Step 1 Materials

For one ball-duct:

Materials
1x 2ft section of 2 in PVC
2x #6-32 x 3/4" flat head screws w/ nuts
4x #6 lock washers
2x Neodymium Magnetic Cup Holder /w 23 lb Holding Force (i tried several different kinds of magnets, and these were the strongest and have a good price point - several vendors on the web)
Balls - I use practice golf balls

Tools
circular saw
drill w 3/4 bit (i used a Forstner bit)
clamps
rotary tool
sand paper
safety glasses (electric saw + PVC = flying plastic!)
philips driver

Comments

[caitlinsdad]

What ball are you using? marble, ping pong, golf, tennis, softball, etc?
It would be nice to use clear tubing so you can see the ball inside rolling around. I guess you can take a lot of ideas from the knex rollercoaster setups and make your own modular Rube Goldberg contraption. Should be fun! Good luck.

[gigemags]

Balls are practice golf balls.

You can see the balls rolling around in all of the ball-ducts as they are PVC cut length-wise.

I've also looked into clear plastic tubing but haven't found any that doesn't collapse when bent. Any ideas?

Thanks for the comment.

-Chris

[RedSnertz]

If you convert to marbles and a smaller diameter clear pipe, you can use a spring bender to get the bend without collapsing the pipe;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_bending#Bending_springs

http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/ProductDetails.aspx?SKU=998012281

[caitlinsdad]

Aside from looking at a plastics supplier, maybe try those protective cover tubes for long fluorescent light bulbs or shipping tubes for posters and drawings. You might be able to put some kind of bend in them with a heat gun. I have seen some wide diameter clear or white opaquish flexible tubing (drain pipe?)at the home centers, might not be big enough for golf balls but you could spiral them around a form to roll some marbles through. You could light them up with LED strips behing to make a cool effect. Lots of people on the site can suggest how to do things to trigger off like lights, counters and sounds when a marble passes a switch.