UNTESTED
This design is an attempt to create a temporary stop for marbles, such that the first marble that arrives gets "stuck" until another marble arrives and knocks it loose. I have no idea if it will work, so I made it as "hackable" as possible.
_Some assembly required. And a rubber band and some filament strips. _
The idea is to have a rubber band stretched across the top at just the right height to snag a marble and hold it loosely. Then the next marbles momentum will push it all the way through, and get captured itself.
The challenge is getting the right height and tension on the rubber band. To that end, this design supports tuning both height and tension in the following ways:
- height is set / adjusted by inserting multiple strips of filament (approx 1.5cm long) into the narrow slots on top.
- tension can be adjusted by wrapping the rubber band around different / multiple posts on the bottom (after passing through the wider slots that go all the way through the tile).
- in addition, the rubber band can cross the tile surface twice at the same height (spread out or layered over each other), or you can place some strips of filament between the two sides of the rubber band so only one of them comes in contact with the ball.
Again, this is completely untested, but I liked the idea of incorporating a rubber band in the mechanism, because those are easy to come by, and thought by publishing this, I might inspire others to think about utilizing such easily acquired materials (like... what can we do with paperclips?).
Remix of Hextraction Basic Tiles by ZackFreedman