Simple Marble Sorting Machine

This project was mechanically very simple to build but re learning the coding skills took us some time.

Simple marble sorting machine.

It s possible to design a marble sorting machine made entirely of paper. Sorting machines are used in many different applications but they all have something in common. With the marble sorting machine the same problem. In this project your goal is to build a gravity powered marble sorting machine that can sort large and small plastic spheres representing rocks and gems respectively like the ones shown in figures 1 and 2.

The machine sorts four different colors and it also counts the number of marbles per color. It is a magical marble sorting machine using a color sensor fom adafruit type tcs34725 and a leonardo arduino from littlebits. Our machine used a one at a time marble reading and while this worked for two types of marbles an issue with the motor changing the sorting bins caused the sorting of the third marble. Building a simple sorting machine from ordinary craft materials is a great way for kids to explore engineering principles and to experiment with iterative design.

Many times these mechanical sorters are powered by motors but simple systems are powered only by gravity. Engineers often prototype a solution and find once they test it that they need to go back and make changes and then test again. Marble machine from. It can be adapted to be an automatic coin sorter with the addition of a small motor to create a vibration to keep the coins moving.

Here is a video of a simple coin sorting machine made from cardboard. All electronic parts are made with littlebits. This video shows how paper can be rolled to create beams that can.