BUILDING A MARBLE CLOCK THAT SHOWS SECONDS - Pt3.

We need a clock that shows milliseconds. Come on, it can’t be that hard.

I'm impressed that the power of lazy hasn't convinced you to put a chair next to your table.

Me, several times in the video: "Wow that's pretty fast, that seems like a good sorting rate, he'll probably stop th- oh."

You already know we want it incorporated.

I design high speed industrial control for work and I'd like to share a few suggestions You could use pulse compressed air to push the marble out of the belt. It can operate way faster and will not create a physical barrier that collide with the belt. Also the trigger solenoid can be directly connected to the infrared sensor so you sort the marble while they are being evaluated (direct connection without logic will work fine). Last, using a ramp and gravity would also simplify your setup. The only electronic would be for detecting/sorting (speed may need to be tested though). I designed several high speed sorting systems (1000+ items/s) for all type of products, and using sensor directly coupled to the actuator (pneumatic) is always the most reliable and fastest solution.

local man puts more marbles on the floor trying to make the marble sorter fast than the speed will ever save

Ivan, you need to make the chain in white so the solenoid doesn't fire on empty links!

Someone is going to see this and say "Uhhh, this is dumb, it serves no purpose, make something practical!" and completely ignore that Ivan just demonstrated how an industrial sorting machine works. Some other kid is going to see it and think "Hey, so that's how they do it in a factory! Much simpler than I thought, I can do that!" and thus start on their path to becoming an engineer.

I know this would be a lot of work on top of what you've already done, but what about building a second sorting machine? You don't even have to change the design, just have a second sorter running in parallel with the first. That would allow you to reduce the speed (maybe to only 15 marbles / s?) and still be able to sort really quickly, since you're effectively multiplying that rate by 2.

Instead of a solenoid, can you use a blast of air? No chance of that damaging the chain.

This is very satisfying, especially with the solenoid.

Two ideas for possible improvements: 1. Eliminate switching on empty slots. Either switch on the light marbles instead of switching on both dark marbles and empty slots. Or make the chain white and continue switching on black. 2. Make use of paralelism. Use more solenoids to kick multiple marbles at once. With two solenoids you can do odd and even slots. Etc.

Marbles on the floor!! *cries in Wintergatan-tears *

I love that rails are the last thing you ever add. Whether it is to your workbench or to your marble sorting machine. Marbles everywhere!

This is some "yak shaving" that I can really get behind. Next you should build a robot vacuum that can identify marbles and collect them from the floor for you.

This series really reminds me of Microsoft's insistence on not putting seconds on the taskbar clock, in Windows 11 they finally added it but the setting still has a warning about using more power. If one of the world's largest companies had that much trouble with seconds, it's no wonder that you are too. I absolutely love watching you press on through every problem you hit, it's super inspiring

Nice project! Two suggestions for easy improvement: (1) Activate the solenoid on silver marbles, not on black ones (and swap the buckets). I saw the solenoid activating also on empty chain positions (2) use a damper on the solenoid to get rid of the vibration/oscillation and thus reduce the interference with the chain.

First line of the video: “Building a marble clock that shows seconds is not as easy as it seems” Trust me, nobody thought it was easy. That’s why we watch your videos, you try so we don’t have to. 🙂 Thanks for the awesome videos.

i find it interesting that you traverse the marbles up instead of using gravity to queue the marbles, like placing a funnel on the top and letting the marbles flow through a funnel where the bottom would have gates that open for the correct collector bucket. that way you don't have to deal with chains and motors but only servos and possibly solenoids

Absolutely!!!!!! it makes total sense to include marble sorting to make a clock that is totally self managed. Vamos Ivan!!!!!