A marble run MOC with a wintry theme.
The prompts for this month's LUG meeting build challenge were "Brrr" and "marble maze;" as before, I liked the added challenge of combining the two concepts. After all, many of the soccer balls used in Lego Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) are white, just like snowballs, so it made sense to combine the idea of a marble run with the stylistic flavor of the frozen north. I rushed home and sketched out my idea:
My plan was to use two "fakego" baseplates from the Dollar Tree, a full 32x32 sheet for the maze's "floor" and a half sheet for the base, with Technic bracing to keep everything at the right angle (hence the 3-4-5 triangle). Originally I'd planned to add a mechanism I'd seen on some MOC dice towers: a crane-like setup where pushing a lever lifts the receptacle from the bottom to the top, dumping the dice (or in this case, marbles) into the top, then lowering it back down to catch them after their run.
Space and stability constraints, however, made that not feasible: it would have required far more bracing to keep the pressure of the mechanism's operation from breaking the setup, and it would have required a different layout...as will be shown later.
I wanted a "decision gate" in the track (described below), and putting it right at the top would allow a dropped marble to be sent down one of two paths. This would, however, not work if I kept the idea of including a lever-action dice cup: as you can see in the sketch above, it would need to be mounted to the side, necessitating a top-left (or right) entrance and a bottom-left (or right) exit. As I continued to work on adding complications to the path, I found that the 32x32 board was rather limiting (the track couldn't go horizontally for too long without the ball losing momentum, at minimum some slope was needed, and at most a series of vertical drops to add speed), so I'd only have space for one decision gate and two paths.
In retrospect, I could have gone much simpler, with long bricks or Technic beams slightly angled and running back and forth across the board, but I have a dearth of such long parts...and anyways, I wanted to add in as many complications as I could.
The first step was figuring out how to secure two of the thin baseplates to one another. Since they only have top studs, and no anti-studs, I needed a different solution to keep everything in place. My first experiments used Technic bricks on top, with lift arms reaching downward. Underneath the plate, I first tried a 1x2 Technic brick with a hole, rotated 90°: this was close to holding the baseplate securely, but there was still wiggle room (and anyways even with a black Technic pin the brick could still rotate. Next I tried orienting the brick right way up, and using a 1x4 gear rack to secure the baseplate from underneath; on seeing that the gear rack was two plates tall (and given that I didn't have that many gear rack pieces) I then tried a plate and tile on top of the Technic brick. This seemed to be the best solution.
Once I started messing with the angles involved, however, I realized that the 90° solutions shown above wouldn't work for this instance. For one, I didn't have any Technic pin connector plates with two holes (the red and yellow pieces above) in blue, white, or light grey; for another, if I attached the bracing at right angles to the top plate, the bottom plate would need to be even longer. It was better to attach the main support at right angles to the bottom plate, as shown below (left).
I did make use of the 1x2 Technic brick with 2 holes with an L-lift arm solution to add further stability. Since the main support (white Technic brick) is roughly at the middle of the top plate, the weight of anything I build on top of it puts a lot of downward force on that half, which naturally provides an upward thrust on the lower half. To counter this, in addition to the L-lift arm, I also used a brick and plate combination to further lock the top plate's bottom edge in place. It has proved to be a sufficient solution, given the difficulties of working with these baseplates as anything other than baseplates.
I hit on the idea of using "Technic, Brick 2 x 6 x 1 1/3 with Axle Holes and Bottom Pins" to secure the support at the bottom side, and the same (but 2x4) on the top side. Both sizes have plenty of grip (thanks to the 2x6 or 2x4 plate that makes up the bottom, and the 2x4 one not only doesn't take up much space on the top, but I could also run 2x2x2/3 curved slopes over them. This would further anchor it to the top, and also made for a nice addition to the track, as you can see in these photos of the finished product:
Once I had the framework set and secure, I could start adding those complications (from the watchmaking term meaning "any function beyond the basic display of time," so in this case it would be anything that stops the ball from simply falling from start to finish).
First, I had to make the decision gate so that whenever a ball "chose" one path, the next ball would be directed in the opposite direction. Drawing on my experience building the K'nex Big Ball Factory as a child, I quickly built a structure similar to the ones in those set, using a 2x2 tile with a Technic pin as both the anchor and the pivot point, with two 3x3 T-shaped liftarms holding a 1x7 liftarm. This proved light enough to be moved by the ball's weight alone, but massy enough to stay to one side or the other until the next ball ticked it over; a stack of 1x4 bricks kept it from pivoting too far in either direction:
A 4x4 radar dish, mounted on the 3/4 technic pin did a good job of hiding most of the grey decision gate. Early on I had decided that a color scheme limited to white and blues would help keep the "Brrr" vibe going strong, so I made an effort to hide the color of the pieces I couldn't replace.
On the left path, I initially hoped to use a gear train to carry the ball around a curve, slowing its progress and adding a little extra motion to the board. Unfortunately, even the oversized gaps between Duplo gears' teeth wasn't large enough to properly hold the ball, so I added some tiles to the studs on top of the 6x6 gear (actually a stack of two to give proper spacing) which did a better job of acting like a water wheel:
A 1x4 slope (mounted on a 1x2 "L" SNOT bracket, hidden beneath another 1x4 slope) carried the ball left, over the double 2x2 slope ramp that held and covered the Technic brick-plate piece that the support beam mounted to, and down a series of steps made by 2x2 pointed slopes mounted on 1x2 bricks. A satin trans-light blue 6x4 windscreen served as a final ramp down to the catch point. I ended up using a lot of pieces from the Z-Blob's Robot and Vehicle Adventures set on this build, as well as Anna and Elsa's Magical Carousel. The ball sometimes stuck on the straight upper side of the windscreen, but adding a 1x2x2/3 wedge helped to keep the ball rolling.
The right side started with a long horizontal track, to see just how far the ball's initial momentum would take it. At the end of the 6-stud run, I added 1x1 barrels to act as a sort of Plinko board, again funneling the ball over the anchor point. A pair of seals from the Arctic Explorer Snowmobile set served as inspiration, given that their bodies are practically slopes. Alas, they proved too easy to jump over, so I added a bit of an iceberg floe beneath them, again channeling the ball to the side with a 1x4 slope and a 1x2 wedge, then onto another satin trans-light blue windscreen.
The two paths join back up at the bottom, where a series of 1x2 slopes—mounted on an increasing number of plates to form a mostly-smooth ramp—guide the ball into the cup. I had to add a 1x2 tile with teeth and a 1x1 pyramid beneath the right windscreen slope to keep the ball from the left side from rolling underneath. As you can see in the below picture, the cup is made from an 8x8 plate with a rounded end, and "glaciers" of trans-light blue 2x2x2 wedges to keep the ball corralled while also allowing for easy finger access. Two 2x4 slope bricks and interwoven plates make for a sturdy connection to the bottom (grey) baseplate, supporting the cup's weight as it hovers half a plate thickness above the table (since the baseplates without anti-studs are that much thinner than a regular plate).
Now that the functional aspect of the build was complete, I found that I had only effectively drawn a diamond on the baseplate, touching the middle points of each side and leaving the four corners and middle pretty much empty. So I began decorating, drawing from my collection to keep everything in theme.
The upper left corner got trans-light blue 4x4 snowflakes, and the left support beam 3x5 cloud tiles, evoking a snowfall; the upper right got a curly plant stem, 3x4 and 5x6 plant leaves, and a Monkie Kid cloud, all in white, to give a blustery feeling. The middle of the board was taken up by a roundel of stacked circles, starting with an 8x8 circle plate topped with a 4x4 dish, and 2x2 and 1x1 tiles, decorated with trans-light blue crystals and an Atlantis Treasure Key in the center, its triangle shape mimicking the split path above it.
For the bottom corners, since I had built up a nice little snowy arcade with a series of 1x2 jumper arches (I'd gotten plenty at my last visit to the local Lego Store's Pick A Brick wall, and just love the way they look) I decided to bust out some minifigs for a few little dioramas.
Continuing the snowy theme of the left side, I set up a little ice hockey game between the mammoth Mottrot and the ice bear Icerlot (I only had his head and mask, but the minifigure body from Sora's Elemental Tech Mech matched the gold accents on his face), with another pair of jumper arches raised on 1x1 plates to serve as their goal, and a blue 1x1 round tile as the puck. I placed Mottrot on a 2x2 turntable plate to give his positioning an active angle, and used a 1x3 tile behind him to keep him from flying around. Two 4x4 plates with 3x3 cutouts also played off the arch shapes, carrying the vertical pattern into the horizontal-ish baseplate, and giving a nice mid-century modern flavor. I'll have to remember this if I ever design an architectural build from that era.
On final corner, I took a cue from the seals' ice floe and placed the Orca minifig from the Batman Movie CMF series in the middle, framing her with various splashy elements: 1x1 bricks with scrolls on the outside, trans-light blue flame pieces, trans-light blue plant stems, and transparent 1x1 slopes to fill the visual holes. Behind the figure I added a 2x2 and 3x3 macaroni tile to further the aquatic feel without getting in the way of the minifig's tail. A silver fish filled out an otherwise empty spot.
I added a few crystal shard blades to further the icy effect. Then I sprinkled 1x1 round tiles in satin trans-clear, trans-light blue, and glitter trans-light blue to fill the rest of the empty space without making things too chaotic, while also subtly emphasizing the different vibes of the four quadrants of the build.
You can see the whole thing below, as well as a video of it being run. It's not perfect, perhaps I need to move the board up or down a hole on the support beams, or perhaps a heavier ball would work better; I know the 14 mm soccer ball piece is the standard for GBCs, but the 19 mm diameter "dragon energy cores" from the Ninjago Dragons Rising Season 1 sets have far more mass and wouldn't get stuck quite so easily, I think...it would just require building with that piece's dimensions in mind, since it's too wide to fit through a 2-stud gap, for example.
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