This is the Marble Machine X,
and today I'm going to test if this machine actually works,
by playing 10000 marbles in a row. [woosh] The marble starts right here in the
brand new clock escapement gate, where they're being dropped onto the snare drum. This part is brand new and I'm excited to see if this marble gate can play 10000
marbles without a single failure. After bouncing on the snare drum
the marbles should enter this funnel and then roll through this pipe straight into the machine. The funnel is connected to this marble track
on the back side of the machine. The marble track is guiding the marbles down to the first lifting mechanism, the big marble lifting gear. So the marbles are then lifted up
down here by this gear. The marbles are then transitioning
from the first gear into a second gear, to lift the marbles even higher. These gears are using magnets to lift the marbles, and we don't want the marbles to be
magnetic, so after the second gear the marbles are pushed through
a demagnetizer wheel. On this wheel the magnets are ordered in an
alternate south-north-south-north pattern. So when the marbles are passing over
and away from this alternate pattern, the magnetism inside the marbles
is totally removed, and the marbles are ready to be transported
up on the marble conveyor belt. The marble conveyor belt here is one of
my proudest part of the machine. It starts and stops to pick up the marbles. The conveyor belt can lift eight marbles per crank turn, and drops off the marbles on these plywood lanes. On the plywood lanes the marbles are
slowed down by over-rotation. And while we're here on the back side of the machine
we can also take a look at the music program. So this part is the brain of the Marble Machine X, using
programming pins to create the musical rhythms, just like midi notes in a music software. The plywood marble lanes here on top of the machine
are dropping the marbles into the brand new marble divider. In the marble divider the marbles can choose to go two ways, either fall straight down into one of these
acrylic tubes to be played by an instrument, or pass over all the channels and enter
the recycling loop for unused marbles. The recycling loop starts with the
divide-by-four over here. It takes one stream of marbles
and divide it evenly on four tracks. Then the marbles go in this turn
and head straight towards the fish stair. Once they reach the top of the fish stair, they can
fall down into the marble divider again. The acrylic pipes are leading down through the machine
into a brand new pressure valve section. This zigzag track reduces the marble pressure and
makes life a little bit easier for the marble gate. So there you go, that's the full loop that
the marbles have to clear today. And in today's 10 000 marble test,
I'm gonna keep a very close eye on the floor. The floor right now is so clean,
I don't think I've ever seen such a clean floor. So let's keep this floor clean
and let's start the 10 000 test. Start.
[motor noise] Activating hi-hat machine...
[hi-hat rhythm] And snare.
[snare drum rhythm] Listen to how the hi-hat machine and the snare slowly start to play in sync with each other
as the machine picks up speed. [snare drum and hi-hat rythm] I'm recording the sound on multiple microphones.
This is what the snare drum microphone sounds like: [snare drum rhythm,
no noise from the machine] [hi-hat rhythm,
no noise from the machine] [hi-hat and snare drum beat,
no noise from the machine] [hi-hat and snare drum beat,
with noise from the machine] [hi-hat and snare drum beat,
with silent noise from the machine] I feel so happy to be back making marble test, I've redesigned so many parts of the machine,
to make it work better than last time. So I really hope that that will show
in the results of today's test. I'm holding my thumbs here! [chuckles] [hi-hat and snare drum rhythm,
with silent noise from the machine] [hi-hat and snare drum rhythm, in high speed] The machine has been playing for thirteen minutes,
which means it has dropped 1000 marbles. So it's time to check the floor,
and so far so good, floor is clean. Yes! [hi-hat and snare drum rhythm,
with silent noise from the machine] The machine has now played 2000 marbles,
and there's still no marbles on the floor, so I'm gonna celebrate that
with a simple bass guitar. [bass guitar solo, accompanied by
hi-hat and snare drum rhythm] And we're cruising up to 3000 marbles,
no failed so far, so let's play some kind of kick-drum
on an accordion case. [kick drum, hi-hat and snare drum rythm,
recorded bass guitar solo] The machine is crushing it so far. We're now 40 minutes into the test, and
4000 marbles have been played, without a single failure. [bass guitar solo, kick drum rhythm,
hi-hat and snare drum rythm] [heavy noise of rolling marbles,
along with hi-hat and snare drum rhythm] [♪ unreleased / No Marbles On The Floor ♪] Are you seeing what I am seeing? [laughs] Let me put a red circle to help you focus your attention.
Right there! The floor is clean, my friends! That feels wonderful to see! The machine has been playing for over
one hour and all systems are nominal. I know from experience though,
in earlier marble tests, that things can go wrong at the very last minute,
so let's hope we can stick this landing in the end. The marble count is now at 6000
and the machine has performed perfectly. Not a single fail, and I'm gonna celebrate 6000
by recording a suspended cymbal pattern. This pattern might sound a little bit odd by itself, but I hope it will work in context
with the other instruments later. My plan is to record, like, a new instrument
for every 1000 marbles, and if we reach 10000, play the whole song
with all the instruments together. [cymbal crescendos, some of them interrupted] Things are working great. The machine keeps on playing, and I'm checking in
here on the zigzag pressure relief track. I love how you can see the marbles
through the sides of the plywood. When there's more channels, it will not be as visible,
it will be more obstructed. So, lets check the time, and... 13:33, looks like we actually already played
7000 marbles with zero fails. Clean floor! Woooo! Yeah! [♪ unreleased / No Marbles On The Floor ♪] This piano sound makes me think of a
famous story from the swedish band Abba, I think it was the band Abba. Anyway, they were in the studio, and they said they had
studio equipment that was so great, that it could turn a one million dollar grand piano sound into the sound of a toy keyboard. [chuckles] That's kind of what I've done with this piano sound. [vibraphone chords] We are getting so close, 8000 marbles, zero fails, and I'm using my Premier vibraphone from 1964, probably my absolute favourite music instrument. [vibraphone melody] [steel guitar chord] [steel guitar melody] So, at this point I'm just waiting to cross this finishing line, celebrating you can see there, the floor is still clean. So now there's only seconds to go. Nothing looks bad. I think I might have done it. [thunder rumble] [electric sparkling] [♪ unreleased / No Marbles On The Floor ♪] [silent explosion sound] [silent explosion sound] [silent explosion sound] [silent explosion sound] Here is everything I did to achieve this perfect score. I replaced this masking tape
with a more serious marble fence, with 3D-printed fence posts and
silicon tube that is snap-in-place. I found a hole in the marble fence,
so I repaired it with some welding. I made a new plywood piece to guide the marble tubes from the top of the
machine down to the bottom of the machine. I removed the old solution and inserted the new piece. I found this edge case where the marbles could actually
get stuck in the new height-independent marble divider. So I removed one of the plywood parts, and then
I re-routed these pockets deeper on the CNC-machine. With the deeper pockets,
the marble can go deeper into this part, and this edge case is removed, and the
marble divider is not clogging anymore. I designed the new clock escapement gate and assembled
the first one and welded it in place onto the machine. I was happy as a bird this day, because I knew that
these were perfect and would never have any issues. Everything was going so great
and I was really really confident, until disaster struck. [marble drops on drum, five times] Huh... this is not working... I'm way too disappointed
to film this correctly... 'cause I dont want to be... [chuckles] angry on video...
[marble drops on drum] In the end, when the marbles are pressing full on, turns out the pressure is actually too high. So, check... this is what happens.
[marble wave hits drum] [chuckles] Well, they all hit the funnel. Let's try this again. [large number of marbles hit drum] [laughs] So, look now...
[marble hits drum] Pressure has decreased,
[marble hits drum] And now it's working perfectly.
[marble hits drum nine times] Let's go downstairs to the... rescuing...
[footsteps] Not happy, I'm so... I'm just trying to not... I'm trying to keep this
family friendly right now. I calmed myself down and mustered up a resource
of patience even I didn't know that I had. And then I cut my whole CNC-bed flat, and I designed a new pressure valve, very
carefully, and a new guiding piece. I even made an intermediate version, so this is the
third version I made this week of this pressure valve. And, voilá, it works perfect. [marble hits drum, five times] I made this pre-tension thingy, that sits in front of
the spring drumsticks of the hi-hat machine. And this is pre-loading these springs, and makes the
volume of the hi-hat machine much louder. I had a big issue before with low volume. I wanted to assemble the microphones seriously,
so I needed to take the drums off, and cut some of the stands out, because
they were in the way for the microphones. So this piece I'm going to cut off, and also, this old piece is made for two drums
but we're only using it for one. [angle grinder noice] I'm angle grinding away the pieces that were in the way, and here you can see now
how the microphone fits in much better. Shoutout to Cristof Bruning for finding this angled SM57,
that's the coolest mike ever. Lastly I found a better way to fix the timing
of the programming plates. I had this external shim washer system before, which meant that I had to take the plates off,
adjust the timing, put them on and test again. And suddenly I just realized, if I put a bolt from the inside, I can adjust the timing when the plates are on the machine, which helped me make the marble machine
play tighter music for you today. [ratchet clicking]
[♪ unreleased / No Marbles On The Floor ♪] The devil is in the details, in this project, I can tell you.
[chuckles] [marble machine playing drum rhythm,
slows down and finally stops playing] Perfect.
[chuckles] It was funny, I talked to Hannes before filming this, I said like: I'm not gonna be happy if it plays perfect,
it should have played perfect two years ago. I'm just gonna take this for granted
to nail the zero fails. But it feels amazing right now, I have to say. Baseball bat is standing right over there, one marble on the floor and this machine
would have been obliterated. [laughs] No, but seriously it feels... amazing, although I think
the machine should have been here two years ago. It almost went wrong with this... the clock escapement gate
that I went all in for that design, right, but... The fix we made... it's perfect. These 10 000 marbles have passed through
almost the whole system, so, the lifting mechanism, the conveyor belt,
the fish stair lifted 65 000 marbles... good! Divide-by-four divided 65 000 marbles... good!
[chuckles] Well done, little Marble Machine X! This weekend, the Wintergatan discord server
is celebrating it's one-year birthday. They are planning a four-day-long stream, with all the Marble Machine videos from start to finish, with, like, Minecraft, Among Us,
and some bake-off competitions in-between. If you want to be part of the Wintergatan discord server
birthday party, which I think is gonna be epic, just go to the discord channel and check the announcement
channels, and you'll find all the links and stuff like that. So welcome to celebrate the birthday, and thank you to everyone who are supporting this
crazy project through Patreon and youtube memberships, I mean, we did 10 000 marbles, and we're close to
10 000 people who are supporting this project, so I'm happy I could play one marble correctly for each
and one of you who are supporting. [chuckles] That warms my heart,
and it warms the heart of all the Wilsons. How are you back there? Oh they're... playing some kind of...
circus pyramid you know when... [chuckles] they do a Wilson formation. Look how happy they are.
[laughs] Epic win for the project, to summarize. This is the result we wanted, and this is the result
we tried to manufacture, and we did it, so... I'm gonna crank down my expectations,
for one second right here, and actually celebrate this win. Wohoo! That was the celebration, tomorrow I start with the hi-hat channel.
// Subtitled by Wintergatan Writers. Join our team on discord. //
