Feeling slightly lost as to what to make, my eye fell on the DT metalworking scrap box. Filled to the brim with offcuts, abandoned projects - pieces left for the dump, I knew instantly what I wanted to do.
Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by marble runs – so, this was the first thing that I thought of making, as it was really important to me to create something functional from the scrap metal as my form of ‘repair’.
I started playing around with the different shapes and materials, seeing how the ball bearings interacted with the scrap metal – trying to figure out what I feasibly could and couldn’t do.
Not all of the machine was perfectly planned out – it was fun not really knowing what I was doing and having to improvise. Mainly, this consisted of a lot of trial and error - simply letting the speed of the ball and the pieces available to me inform my design decisions.
For instance, when I was about to run out of metal parts, I realised that I could simply use the screws by themselves to direct the ball bearing to where I wanted it to go.
I really enjoyed the whole process of creating the sculpture and having to use the more mathematical side of my brain to problem solve - especially troubleshooting the machine. It was like I was a detective having figure out (and fix) exactly what went wrong.
