Amazing Meccano Machine - Hypnotic and Mesmerising

I designed and built this machine in December 2024 and January 2025.
My inspiration came from a 3D printed 2 Stage Marble Lift by Marc Martin -
   • Marble lift : 2 stage arm (3D printed)  
The fundamental problem to overcome with any Meccano-based ball roller is creating a smooth track for the balls devoid of any protruding nuts and bolts, and almost everything in Meccano is held together by, nuts and bolts. One is also working from a kit of standardised components and so one has to wrack one’s brains to figure out to achieve each action from the parts that are available, but isn’t this ingenuity the best part of working with Meccano? I know that it is for me. For example, the rocking ball catcher in the original model is a single piece of bespoke, 3D printed plastic. To create it in Meccano I used 13 parts.
So what does the machine do? A pivoted arm picks up and lifts a marble from the lowest level of the machine - the rocking ball catcher. The marble is then transferred to a second pivoted arm which lifts it to the highest point on the machine - the curved track. The movement of these two arms is carefully synchronised.
At the top of the lift, the marble rolls down the curved track and drops onto a pivoted, counter-balanced arm which places it onto a lower track. This returns it to its starting position.
The machine was originally designed to circulate a single marble. However, once completed I found it was possible to have two marbles in play.
Not being satisfied with this first version, I felt that the machine would have more visual appeal if it had a large flywheel. For this I used a five and a half inch hub disc. It serves purpose, but I like the look of it slowly rotating. At the same time I changed the motor from an E15R to a power drive unit, and completely redesigned the gearbox.
The final modification was to add a stop gate to hold the second marble back until the first marble had been picked up by the lower arm. As this gate needed to be lifted once for every cycle of the lifting arms, I took the drive off their main drive shaft utilising a pair of bevel gears.
After careful adjustments, I have found the machine to be 100% reliable in operation and I feel it would make an excellent exhibition model.

Music: Rinse Repeat by DivKid