Gumball Coaster Is 3D-Printed Candy Fun

It’s fun to run marble runs, but how about if the marbles could be eaten? To answer that question, gumballs provide a satisfying solution. To that end [Adrian Seeley] A system is being developed to automate the production of gumballs for candy and entertainment purposes.

The order of the straights turns and ramps can be written out as a track description. After being created as a JSON, the track description can be processed using Javascript in order to create an OpenSCAD tiled physical representation, complete with all support structures. The pieces can be 3D-printed to create a gumball run which can be assembled easily.

[Adrian] created a small tabletop “gumcoaster” as a prototype. Even though it was small, the assembly took 11-hours. It was a prototype for a bigger version he wants to build. We’ve seen some great marble runs before too, including those created via procedural generation. After the break, video.