Final Project

The Marble Musician

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Final Project Explanation

My final project is a marble-driven music player aka the "Marble Musician". It works by a computer releasing marbles as directed by a MIDI file (likely) via a mounted computer. The balls will fall down and strike the associated chime.
The balls will then be caught in a padded (to keep noise down) basin. A track will then return the marbles to the top where they will be distributed back to the guides for the different chimes, ready to play another note.

I started by sketching out the project on a sketchpad as seen below.

Sketch of the marble musician project on a notepad.

I started with the base and the vertical column that everything else mounts to. This was created in Fusion360.

CAD view of the flat rectangular base with a tall vertical column rising from its center

Next I added the bowl and the row of guide fins across the top. These hold the marbles as they wait to be released and will have either a door or rotating grear to release them onto the chimes below.
The bowl catches the returned marbles.

Close-up CAD view of the rounded bowl at the base of the column and the row of evenly spaced guide fins mounted on a crossbar above it

Then came the pipes that are struck by the marbles. The actual numbers and types of chime will change as the design evolves.w

CAD view of a descending row of cylindrical pipes arranged in a staircase beneath the guide fins

Finally, I modeled the lift that carries the ball back up to the top.

Full CAD view of the assembled machine showing the lift arms running up the column, the angled chute, the pipes, and the bowl on the base

Check out the embedded model below!

Central Module

The central module is the main board that controls the seven chime modules, along with the microphone for calibration, the screen, and the control buttons. It was designed in the Week 5 - Electronics Design assignment.

3D view of the central module board

AI use notated in the html

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