So, I need some way of elevating the marbles from down here
to somewhere up here.
And, I came up with this marble pump originally.
That mechanism was originally invented by my brother in 1996.
And it's based on a piston that just rotates around.
It's a bit bulky and complicated. So I
experimented with this simple lever-based design.
And it just has a lever to level the marbles up.
And then there is this rationing lever here
that keeps the marbles from falling back
down and I can elevate the marbles that way.
But, this one's a little bit ugly. So my next version so this one here.
So, this pump works, very much the same way.
And to get the marbles further up, I made these blocks
that plug into here to guide the marbles
further up the stack.
And that's how they get elevated.
But the problem with this one is it's not based
on a 32 millimeter increment. So, I came up with a new design.
And I printed that plan one to one with Sketch-Up.
But you can hardly read some of the dimensions. And it wasted a lot of ink.
And it's really coarse. I don't know why Sketch-Up prints so bad one to one.
So, I printed it from a screen shot using my big print program.
And I also, in my big print program, lightened solid areas
so I wasn't wasting so much ink. And this plan
is based more on a 32 millimeter increment.
So, it'll work out better with the dimensions of my ramps and other pieces.
There is a little block of wood in here that
acts as a ratchet to keep the marbles from
falling back down. And for that I need to cut out a slot here.
And I marked where that goes here.
And I'm gonna use a table saw to cut that slot out, like so.
There's a lever that goes in here for pushing the marbles up.
And that fits in a slot, in here.
And I'm gonna cut that out with a router on my slot mortiser.
So, I goofed up a little bit because I drilled this hole before I cut the notch
and measured it wrong. And in here goes the little thing for the ratchet with the nail.
Through that pin. And that's pretty tricky to line that up.
And another one on here. And again, a nail through the hole.
And, again it's tricky to line it up so...
I've got this one already put together.
And I put a rubber band on here to return the
lever and another one here to return the ratchet.
And now if I put a ramp on here
I'm gonna have some buttons that stick out from the top here
for aligning of blocks that stack on top.
So, I'm gluing up a wedge in here to close up
the top of that slot that's used for the ratchet,
So, I glued a block on the side here with a button on here
And this allows me to hook a ramp on here.
To make sure it stays aligned.
And now, to pump the marbles up any height
I made some of these blocks on my horizontal boring machine
with a hole through the middle.
And this allows me to pump the marbles up. And I can go
higher by stacking more of these blocks on top.
Now to get the marbles back on to the ramps
at the top of the stack
I made this thing which has got a hole through it here
and then a hole at an angle with a little tab
here to push the marbles off to the side.
I can put this here and a ramp hooks right onto here.
And I can pump the marbles all the way up, like that.
This block has a second hole that's drilled in
from a 45 degree angle like that.
And, I used my horizontal boring machine
to, kind of, start that hole right on the corner.
It would have been hard to do with a drill press.
After I made some blocks like this, I realized I could simplify the design a bit.
I could eliminate that tab if I just took the hole that came from the bottom
and drilled it, not all the way through, to the top.
And then drilled another hole in here to meet up with the other hole.
I did have to clean up on the inside, a little bit with the chisel
to make that work though. I had the idea of cutting out
a slot here so you could see the marbles as they rise up the column.
Now, let's finish this.