We always enjoy seeing our products being modified, revamped and DIY-ed, as well as the results of these transformations.

Our customer Vera Kark provided us with some thoughtful feedback on adding mechanical tweaks to improve our Solar GraviTrack build and documentation. She also painted the brown MDF of the machine. She used tempera paint on the wood components still in panelized form, and the GraviTrack‘s performance seemed to be unaffected. 

The GraviTrack looks great in vibrant jewel tone colours, however, we do not recommend applying paint to the hand mechanism itself. You can paint the base and the rails, avoiding the hand mechanism completely. The moisture and the thickness of the paint might affect the precise tolerances of the moving parts, and will interfere with its proper functioning. Another relatively safe option might be felt tip marker since the moisture from alcohol evaporates quickly.

Photos & video by Vera Kark

P.S. Also, a particularly bad idea is painting your GraviTrack after the assembly is completed. Even though we were using a very watered down acrylic paint, the mechanism seized up the moment the paint became sticky. Don’t be like us. Take care of your GraviTrack.

A portrait of a sad stuck GraviTrack

We are happy to announce the arrival of the Battery Edition Marble Machine. Starting today it is available at our website for backorder, and will be fully available for purchase starting tomorrow May 16.

You are probably familiar with its older cousin, the Solar Marble Machine that has a clever circuit that delivers short bursts of energy collected by the solar cell to the gear wheel.  And while the Solar Marble Machine runs on pure and natural solar energy and is a lot of fun of fun to watch, the Battery Version doesn’t depend on the external lighting conditions and will faithfully deliver mesmerizing marble run action in complete darkness if necessary, with just a flip of a switch. On top of that, it is solder-free. In fact, it is so easy to assemble, your cat could build it.

The kit comes to you complete with all the components you need to build your own Marble Machine. The assembly is straightforward and well-documented, and you will only need a few hand tools (no hot melting solder spewing around, expensive tools or motor skills required). The wooden parts come in handy panels with additional instructions, and if you snap a piece during assembly, we’ll send you out a replacement part (email [email protected] for details). We also have spent a good chunk of engineering time improving the initial layout to make the machine’s assembly and performance smoother.

So here you have – you can now populate your desk with a self-sufficient wooden distraction and watch the marbles roll down automagically.

Check out the Marble Machine in action:

We also created a handy assembly video for your cat to refer to: