Make A Wooden Marble Coaster With A Single 2X4 #ArtTuesday
Instructables user seamster makes this amazing wooden roller coarser using a single 2X4 and a childs drill toy as the motor.
I love roller coasters. Especially wooden ones.
To me, they are the epitome of functional art. The timber frameworks are mesmerizing feats of creativity in and of themselves, aside from the fact that they are built so people can zip along in a little car on a track on top, under, and through them. Modern metal and hybrid coasters are fascinating as well, but the old wooden ones have a special appeal to many people, me being one of them.
I also love rolling ball sculptures, and kinetic art in general.
A few years ago I made a pretty neat marble coaster out of cardboard. Ever since then I’ve often thought it would be fun to make another one, but this time completely out of wood and styled to look like a classic wooden roller coaster.
This is the realization of that idea, and I’m happy to report that this wooden marble coaster works great and was incredibly fun and satisfying to make.
The highlight of the build for me is the solid wood Archimedes-screw-type lift that transfers the marbles back to the top of the track for continuous rolling action.
And just to keep it interesting, the entire thing was made from a SINGLE 8-foot two-by-four!
Come along and see how it was made, and then perhaps go and make your own. Thanks for checking this out!
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!