Magnetic Marbles Game

Tired of playing marbles the traditional way?  Try this twist on an old favorite.

Standard marbles have a single Shooter marble that is 25mm diameter and any number of Play marbles that are 16mm diameter.  However, in my version, the marbles are designed to contain magnets.

For my standard rules, the “6” shooter will have all 6 magnets with North Poles facing out, and all play marbles have all 6 magnets also with all North poles facing out.  This makes for balls that repel each other.

Optional variations: make the “-6” Shooter have all 6 magnets with South Poles facing out.  Leave the play marbles with North poles facing out.  This will make the balls stick to the shooter while still repelling each other.

Another variation would be to mix it up.  Various combinations of player marbles with either all North facing out, all South facing out, and some with a mix.  Either print all the same color, or use three different colors to indicate which is which.  The game gets tricky either way.

ALTERNATIVE MODELS:

In addition to the “6” Magnet versions, I provided “1” Magnet versions, and No Magnet versions.

PRINTING:

All marbles should be printed on supports, otherwise your marble will roll away during printing.  Unfortunately, this leads to the necessity of sanding the support connections away for a smoothly rolling ball.

It is necessary to pause the printing to insert the magnets.  To do this, first Slice the model.  Then use layer view and slide the layer marker up and down to find the last layer of each opening.  For “6” balls, there need to be 3 separate pause levels.  For “1” balls, a single pause is needed.  For no magnet balls, no pause is necessary.  Once all the pauses are inserted, rerun the Slice operation.

There are two ways to customize this model.  For Blender fans, there is a spreadsheet that calculates all the parameters to modify in the shapes inside Blender.  For TinkerCad fans, there is a Tinkercad CodeBlock ( https://www.tinkercad.com/codeblocks/l3vmZUAdg3P-magnetic-marble ) that can generate the marbles based on variables.  The TinkerCad version is simpler to use IMHO, though I am new to TinkerCad.

NOTE on magnets:  I refer to North and South magnetic poles, but without a reference magnet, there's no way to tell which is which.  I recommend just putting a sharpie dot on one side of a magnet.  Then, the way they stick to each other, you can put a dot on the same side of each magnet.  This becomes “North”.

NOTE on modifying the design and placing the magnets:  You will want the magnets as close to the surface as you can for magnetic strength, without compromising the structural integrity of the ball.  This may take some experimentation to optimize.

NOTE on Commercial use: I can be contacted at [email protected]