Testing the Marble Module & Introducing the MMX CAD Team! - Marble Machine X #139

Welcome to Wintergatan Wednesdays
where I'm trying to finish the Marble Machine X.

And the plywood parts lying on my work table today

are going to play a crucial role
in me being able to finish this machine or not.

I love these pieces. They are really
tomato sauce umami pieces...

By the way, thank you so much for the amazing
response on last week's update video.

That was amazing to see. Thank you.

In today's video, we are going to assemble these pieces,

and try them out to see if they work and do what they should do.

We're also going to meet the amazing
Marble Machine X CAD team.

But before that, let's get to some assembly.

When designing these pieces, I've been using one of my
favorite trick: I've split the design in the middle.

So if you check here if I take this piece and I turn it over 180 degrees, and I put it together with the other piece

that creates a shape that is impossible
for me to cut on the CNC machine.

And then I use the same technique on this crooked marble paths.

If I take these two pieces, they are mirrored,
and I put them together, like so.

We have a crooked marble path inside this plywood block.

This marble module will alter the length of the marble paths,

controlling that the marbles are flush on the top of the marble divider.

I've designed these so you can open and close to keep the different modules locked in place here.

[drilling]

[ratchet clicking]

So these are all unique marble paths with different lengths.

As you can see, I can just fit four marbles on there.

This "6" here, you can see that it's crooked.
I've shifted the path, six millimeters...

See that space there? That's the whole reason
for the existence of this part.

Let's check "14", even more space,
and the longest path I have is this one, "22",

and here you can see that I can even fit five marbles.

So now when I know I have... the longest one can
accommodate a whole extra marble,

then I know I have all the combinations I will ever need.

So every path has its corresponding mirrored path...
like so.

These modules will later slot in here,
but first we have to assemble them.

To align them perfectly, I'm going to use some clamps.

[drilling]

I hardly feel the edge with my finger here.
That's perfect!

Looking at the outside of this module,
we don't know what curves are inside.

So I'm gonna mark them with their number
on a surface that will be hidden when in use.

I assembled all of them and they're gorgeous.

So, if there's something I've learned
during the Marble Machine X project,

it's to machine plywood.
[laughs]

Let's try them!

So here we can clearly see how the top marble
sits lower and lower and lower.

Let's try them on the docking station.

This is how it works. It slides in like so,
and then I can take another one, put it like so.

And I can change them out to adjust
the top height of the top marble.

But, there is a radius from the
tool of the CNC machine, here.

And here's a sharp corner and I want this radius here
to make these a little bit more sturdy.

So now I need to take off this sharp corner.
The radius of this fillet is three millimeter.

So I'm scoring a three millimeter line here with my caliper.

And now I can use the disc sander to sand away
this corner until I come up to the scored line.

Here you can see I rounded over the corners and now it sits flush in the bottom.

Perfect!

All the pieces are ready and I can lower these cam levers,

so we can test this out; see how it fits.

This thing is actually gonna go up here on the machine,
and I can already see a misalignment. Let me show you.

I slide in the modules; you can then see the misalignment.

This should be concentric; the parts are too much this way.

So you can see the exact same effect
on the top row but even worse.

Here you hardly can spot the edge of the top edge.

I'm gonna put shim washers both here and between them, here.

3.14 so I need the two washers to be exactly pi.

3.14, pi again. So you can use pi in this case,

because whenever you take something
completely round, and you put it twice,

the width will always be 3.14...

It's very useful.

[drilling]

I made a maracas!

[rhythmic rattle]

[thumping]

[drilling and rattling]

That looks super centered
and this looks perfect as well.

Washer stacks has saved us once again,

and we can now test this thing for real.

These two PMMA pipes are just a visualization.

Think of the top of these pipes
as the top of the marble divider,

where the top marble needs to be absolutely flush.

So we're going to start with "0" and "2",
just to have something to experiment with.

So I slot this in like a server, this I think is so cool,

like: shtuck, shtuck, shtuck,
and then we're gonna fill the pipes.

Do you see that this marble is sticking up,
and that this marble is sticking up, but much less?

With my modular system, I can now tweak this.

So let's start over here with this channel.

It needs to go down...

quite a lot. So I'm going to take this one out...

without dropping all the marbles.

So we had "2" and now I'm inserting "16".

Closing...

Look at that! Almost exactly flush!

I actually want this top marble to be a little bit
higher. We used "16", let's try "14".

This is a one-time setup. I would never have to
do this more than once on the real machine.

Yeah! Boom, that's perfect! This one is just
a little bit over; number "6", here.

[marbles falling on the table and on the floor]

Slot this one in...

Boom, it's flush!

[pow]

This part takes care of a function
to make the marbles flush all by itself,

leaving the new marble gates
free to be much simpler.

I make all the subassemblies
more stupid, more reliable.

If I keep on doing that, the Marble
Machine X will actually work.

What is more amazing though,
is what's going to happen now.

Because while I am building in my workshop,

we have a CAD team working on the
CAD model of the Marble Machine X.

It's been a huge disappointment for me personally,

that I haven't been able to keep... update
the CAD model of this project.

So while back I asked people on the discord server
if they wanted to be part of a CAD team.

This project has been going on in the background
for the last four months,

and it's just filled with amazing, amazing people.

So right off the bat, I just want to say thanks to
everyone who are part of the CAD team.

And especially, you're gonna meet Maureen
from Meticulae Designs youtube channel.

Maureen is the defender of the Kinetic Fingers,

and I asked Maureen if she could make a little video

introducing the CAD team.

So after this successful try I'm gonna hand it over to Maureen.

Check out her youtube channel, Meticulae Designs

and... enjoy!

[boom]

Maureen: - Three months ago... a butterfly made a list.

[boom]

Three months ago... the butterfly put out a call for help.

[boom]

And three months ago... the call was answered by an army of volunteers.

But did they know what they were getting into?
[♪ unreleased/The Ondophone Prototype 1.1 ♪]

Inside that innocent-looking simple little
row, a great beast was hidden.

The beast was born from software
limitations, collaborator restrictions,

and the abandonment of its tracking system.

It threatened madness, despair, and
hopelessness on anyone attempting to tame it.

But the thousand arms of the volunteers
were not deterred.

They bared their spoons, because they knew
the secret to conquering this beast.

How do you eat an elephant?

[♪ unreleased/The Ondophone Prototype 1.1 ♪]

Hi, I'm Maureen! I'm here to talk
about the CAD MMX Project

and share what the CAD team's
been up to in our first months.

When Martin announced this project on discord,
dozens of CAD modelers immediately jumped on board.

By now we have over 200 people signed
up to follow the CAD team discord channel.

But finding volunteers turned out to be the
easy part.

The difficulty in this project lies with the
complexity of the CAD model

pushing Fusion 360 past its limits
and with the management of thousands of parts,

designed by multiple people over a number of years,

many of which have been physically changed
on the machine, but not updated in CAD.

And the only reliable resource we have to track all of this

are the MMX build videos Martin's made.

So Martin wasn't kidding when he said that
the biggest challenge to this project was

finding a project manager, because instead of just one,

we currently have six managers of the CAD team.

Some of them have been members
of the e-team for quite a while,

while others are new to the team.

Tim Keller's our project leader
and liaison with Martin.

Tim Mitchell, Will Francis, and David Lewis
are our Quality Control team.

Tim & Will make sure the parts
our team members are working on

match the modeling and defeaturing
guidelines set forth in our instructions,

and David oversees assembly of the approved
parts into our new Master Assembly.

Jordan Bowden is new to the e-team.

He's an Airtable wizard who built our new database

and manages all our assets.

And I'm Maureen Krauth. I'm new to the e-team too,

and my job is maintaining our documentation
and People Management.

The project is broken into two phases.
[♪ unreleased/Testing E-Bow on Ondophone ♪]

In Phase 1, we're simplifying
the CAD model inside Fusion 360

by removing all fasteners, defeaturing
internal geometry, and remodeling parts efficiently,

to keep the 3D model
computationally light and easy to load.

At the same time we're bringing
the CAD model up-to-date

so that it matches the physical machine.

When Phase 1 is complete
we will release the CAD model

to the MMX fan community for free,

and if the ideas people are sharing on
discord already are any indication,

there'll be a lot of cool things
coming out after this project is done.

In Phase 2 we will be rebuilding the CAD MMX
from scratch, likely using another program.

We will closely scrutinize each and every
part, and redesign everything we can

to be more easily manufacturable, so Martin can
have backup parts for the World Tour,

that don't require improvisations or manual CNC-ing.

Along with these Phases, we're recreating
the PBS inside a program called Airtable,

to track everything we're doing.

This new database has the old one in it,

along with other data crucial for our team,

including time-coded reference for which parts
are seen in which episodes,

and flowcharts mapping out the
power train and marble flow.

Ultimately we'll create a bill of materials
that tracks every single part

and piece of hardware for Phase 2,

with details for machining and assembly.

[♪ unreleased/Cyber Bass Funkalizer ♪]

To start this project, Martin & Tim Keller
went through the whole machine together,

sorting the machine into roughly
100 logical assembly groupings,

which make more sense now
that the machine's almost done,

than the older organization of the
design-as-you-go PBS system.

Martin's done walk-around videos for us, explaining what's included in each of the new assembly groupings.

We then dig through the old e-team folders
in Fusion to find any existing CAD models,

and bring them into our new team project.

Any part that's been changed from its
original design will need to be updated,

while other parts were never designed in CAD
and have to be modeled from scratch.

Every week on Wednesdays we have a team meeting
inside discord where we go over the parts we'll be assigning,

and answer questions people have
about what they're working on.

And then we watch the Wintergatan Wednesday
video together as a team (hi guys!)

and collectively freak out any time Martin gets out
the angle grinder for a part we've already done.

Martin: - Time for the angle grinder.
CAD team members: - Ooh... [chuckles]

Tim Keller: - Another part goes from
completed back to not completed.

Andrey Shur: - Yeees!
[laughs]

Andrey Shur: - Angle grind me, Martin!
[laughs]

Our volunteers span the entire globe,
speak 19 different languages,

and have a range of experience levels
in Fusion 360 and other CAD programs

from absolute newbie to experienced master.

Because there are only so many parts to go around
and we want to try to include everyone,

we've come up with a partnership system where we assign
more experienced Seniors with less experienced Juniors,

and team people up based on how their assemblies
connect to each other inside the machine.

These groups are overseen by team leaders,

who look for alignment issues
as they test-fit the parts together,

and we also have a Status Trackers team that keeps
the organizational side of things running smoothly.

They ensure everything is kept updated
between discord, Fusion, and Airtable,

so we can track the status
of every part of the model at any time.

So far, 74 team members
have been assigned to work on

80 different parts of the CAD MMX.

Once the assignments have been announced,
the volunteers figure out if those models

match the video reference or need to be updated.

Martin measures specific bits of the machine

that our team members request for accuracy.

They update their models, defeature them,

and submit them to be checked by Quality Control.

After enough parts in an assembly group
have been approved,

they're ready for the team leaders
to begin Assembly Check.

Aligning the power train to the base frame
was the first step in this process.

David's created a master skeleton
to check everything against,

and the team leaders look for alignment issues
and figure out if everything's working together.

The Assembly Check process can take a while,

because everything is connected to
everything else, and each part needs to be

checked against not only what it's mounted
to but also what it's moving with.

Bite by bite, we're making good progress,

and we'll keep working our way
all the way up to the top.

Three months ago, none of this existed.

Three months ago, Martin had no idea if people
would even want to tackle this monster project.

And three months ago, that elephant
had no idea what was coming for it.

[♪ unreleased/ Cyber Bass Funkalizer ♪]

[chuckles]

Martin: - I'm laughing so much right now;

I'm picturing the CAD team

in these live-viewing parties of the episodes,

like when I put out the angle grinder
[laughs]

and someone has, like,

CAD-ed the piece down to perfection

and they just laugh about it!

That says everything; that we're a...

huge club of delayed gratification.

So, check out Maureen's videos on the Kinetic Fingers,

and thank you, Maureen, for making this video.

My favorite part of the CAD project is the Phase 2,

where we're actually going to redesign
all the mistakes on this machine,

where we can, like, together,
me and the whole CAD team,

everyone can, like, pitch in ideas for simplifications.

I'm thinking, for example, I wanna skip the magnet lifts.
[chuckles]

They're causing so much trouble. Everyone told me
from the beginning: "don't do magnet lifting".

I wanted this cool visual effect.

I think we should redesign the MMY to have
a classical marble machine lift technique,

we can then skip the whole demag wheel.

Sorry, you who have CADed the demag wheel.

But basically, the MMY is going to be, like,
the machine as I should have done it, right?

So, the original Marble Machine
became a prototype for this.

This is the prototype for the MMY.

So, potentially, on the world tour,

I will play live on the MMY. That can happen.

At the main rudder of this gigantic
cruise ship is Tim Keller.

So, you know him from
Tim Keller and The Broken Endmills.

Apparently, they changed name of the
band to The Elephant Eaters. [laughs]

Tim Keller has been a huge part
of the whole Marble Machine X project,

and is now heading this CAD team
and is doing an awesome job out of it.

Let's check in on the latest update on the
CAD project from Tim Keller himself.

Tim: - The update on the CAD project is
"my team rocks". My team is... is so cool.

It makes it easy to be the leader of a team
when your team just is all self-starters,

and we're working on something where
everyone, like, really wants to be part of it.

It makes leading a team like that
really easy and really fun.

There's so many people who are
part of the discord community,

I've been able to go and find people who
look like, oh, this person is pretty engaged,

this person has a knowledge base or a skill base
that I think might be interesting,

have a couple of conversations with them,
bring them onto the team,

and all of a sudden they're doing amazing things
that I wouldn't have thought of. And I love it.

Early in the Wintergatan series, you guys had
an episode on the PBS system, right,

that Chris had developed with Martin.

This is the PBS system, and the PBS
system was basically a number line, right?

So as the numbers went up,
you were able to categorize

and get all the different parts
kind of into groups along that number line.

This is a database, and the company Airtable

actually gave us this for free,
which was awesome of them.

They didn't ask for anything in return,
which was super awesome.

And you can go down all the way
as deep as you want on these things,

all the way back to, let's see...
vibraphone resonator pipes.

You can see, these are episodes...

where he's talked about the vibraphone resonator pipes.

Here are... time stamps, transcriptions... [laughs]

of what's happening in that episode.
I mean, it...

And this isn't... this isn't all just a software,

we have a team of people who are doing this,
and putting this information in, right?

Garbage in, garbage out.

The fact that this community is doing this, and...

and especially, you know, as
someone who gets to lead this team,

I actually don't know who's doing this, right?

This is being managed by someone
who Maureen is managing,

and it's all taking care of itself, because...
because the community is so just energetic

and willing to be... to play some small role in it.

It's... super cool.

When we get into phase two of this project, we're
actually going to be doing it using a master skeleton

of the machine where we have
all the key components laid out.

Where each axis of each, you know,
linear shaft has to be,

where the mating points of
all the gears are going to be,

and where all of the different paths
that the marbles could take through.

And we're gonna start with a skeleton like that,
and then design the machine around it.

That's a big change to the way that Martin
originally designed it with Fusion 360.

Fusion 360 is what's called a top-down modeling environment where you design individual parts,

and then you can kind of break them up into assemblies.

Things like Solidworks and some other ones
are bottom-up where you can say:

Hey, this is the overall architecture of the...
of what you're building,

and now let me make parts
that fit into that architecture.

When you are making something as complicated as the MMX,
you really do need a bottom up environment,

which is why in phase two, we're gonna be going to
a more professional software platform like that.

So there are several kind of cool VR projects
that are out there. There are...

One is a guy who actually did
his own simplified Marble Machine CAD.

Brian Harms: - Hi Martin, I have created a simplified
version of the MMX that you can actually play in VR.

Ah! Forgot the crank downstairs,
let me go grab that. Oh no, Wilson...

Sometimes when he drinks he tries to
CNC an army of evil Wilsons.

All right, let's slap this on the machine.
[plop]

[music slightly off rhythm]
[♪ Wintergatan: Marble Machine ♪]

There it is. I hope you liked it!

[strange laughter]
What was that?

[high pitched Wilson noises]
Evil Wilson #1: Attack! Let's go!

Brian: - Oh ho! Not again.
[Wilson laughs]

Evil Wilson #1: Now you'll never finish this project!
Evil Wilson #2: Oh, sick burn evil Wilson!

Tim: - The model that we spit out
at the end of this will be de-featured,

it'll have all of the relevant parts,
it will be cosmetically accurate.

It'll be, you know, the real machine.

And people will be able to do with that digital asset, whatever the heck they want.

There is so much you could do...

We could make literally a playable virtual reality Marble Machine.

Yeah, Martin is always very thankful and very... very keen to express his gratitude to these people,

but we're all just doing it 'cause it's fun. And...

I love that I get a place to play with people who are so generous,

and who are so smart, and just gifted that the community itself is rewarding.

I find myself just chatting with, you know, Maureen and with Jordan and David Lewis, it's...

We're our own family and if Martin got hit by a Marble Machine, you know,

two weeks from..., we'd probably still be doing this, right?

The community has its own rewards, and I love being part of it.

Martin: - What can I say?

[Martin singing]
[♪ Tegan and Sara: Everything Is Awesome ♪]

♪ Everything is awesome, ♪
♪ everything is cool when you're part of a team. ♪

My main intention with the discord server

was for like-minded people to have a platform where we could meet each other.

That's exactly what is happening right now.

And I mean, if there's any tech businesses out there in the world looking for amazing talent,

lurking around in the Wintergatan discord server might be one of your best bets.

I loved how you described the team members, Tim,

and how many people are just like taking their own initiatives.

The attacking Wilson's...
Brian, that was absolutely genius.

I was wondering why my stash of Dragon tears was empty...

I mean, the sky's the limit when it comes to digital, so maybe I can prototype MMY in virtual reality,

so I can basically maybe even compose on MMY in virtual reality.

Before we actually order the parts to be manufactured,

we should make a whole like VR game

where the purpose is to, like,
never finish the Marble Machine X.

Like, the Marble Machine X is in the corner.

It builds by itself and you have to procrastinate, so it doesn't get finished.

Tim Keller has his own youtube channel, so be sure to check out Tim Keller's youtube channel

and if you wanna connect with any of these wonderful people:

Just head over to the Wintergatan discord server. They're right there.

We just launched a new playlist on the Wintergatan youtube channel

with all the videos from Marble Machine X collaborators.

I don't want to miss a single video on this playlist.

So if you know a video that should be in this playlist and it's not,

please contact Joanna from Team Wintergatan on discord server

and Joanna: Welcome to the team, by the way!

A while back we asked for Wintergatan community submissions.

And we showed some of them, but then the building took over.

But they're still coming a lot of cool submissions,

so we thought we should take some of our favorites, and show them here,

as a tribute to the Wintergatan community.

Simon: - Hi, Martin. I'm Simon from tiny youtube channel, called the Applied Procrastination,

where instead of doing stuff we should have been doing, we've been using our last couple of years

building an overly complicated art project.
And we'd loved what you do.

We never even considered making
youtube videos until we saw yours.

So we followed your formula and made an open build vlog

where people can follow along, and even replicate our machine for free if they want to.

So this is our tribute to you and to overly complex machines. Thanks for being an inspiration.

Martin: - I have no clue how they made
that black fluid go into letters...

Applied procrastination, you have the best youtube channel name of whole youtube. Check them out.

Thanks everyone for sending in the community submissions.

I can't wait until this machine is done, and I can kind of come out of this dark hole,

and meet all of you on the world tour.

During the spring, I was... literally thinking of giving up

and like, giving up is absolutely not an option.

I believe in this project, even more after seeing all this.

Thank you, everyone!
["poosh"]

Tim: - I've been waiting just to talk to you for so long, you know,

take my revenge on you for calling me...
calling me a huge liar!

I haven't forgotten that, by the way.
Hannes: - Oh, no!

Martin: - You know what Tim Keller told me the other day?

He said that the Marble Machine X is not sunken cost fallacy.

I was so happy to hear.

Hannes: - Okay, he's a good liar, though...

But, what you missed is that what I actually told him

was that the Marble Machine is not a sunk cost.

It's an asset. Right?

And... it is, it's a brand it's all these other things.

But it's... it's an asset like a racehorse is an asset, right?

It only makes money when you ride it.
You have to feed it.

So it's the kind of asset that you don't own.
It owns you. [lauging]

So it's actually...
it's actually worse than if it was a sunk cost.

It's an asset that completely dominates your entire life. And if you let it go, you have nothing.

[laughs]

So, if Martin wants cause to be...
you know, despondent and depressed

about the Marble Machine X dominating his life, it's that:

It's that he cannot get off this horse.