Yesterday I ordered 500 marbles with a diameter of 10 mm. I need to wait for them to make some tests to find out the right angle for the ramp ( maybe I even need to make the ramp a bit curved to get a constant speed ) before I can start constructing the whole thing.

But heres already a raw construction plan for one column of the display.

I'm planing to use 4 mm thick wood and cut out the pieces with a lasercutter.

The fourth layer will be the first of the next column.

The stick that's connected with the Marbleswitch will get pushed and pulled by a electromagnet.

To control the electromagnets I'm going to use an arduino.

You maybe already noticed that the middle part is floating in the air. My solution for that is to put metal tubes through the middle part of all columns and hold them left and right beside the whole Marble Display.

The elevatorwheels will be connected with one thick metal tube that goes through the middle of all elevatorwheels. The tube will be connected with a motor.

The idea of the lifting system comes from this video

To get the timing write I'll do something like that: