Amish-made marble machines are interesting little contraptions. A small tray takes marbles down to a lower level, after which a counterweight moves the tray back up, so the next marble can go through.
I started creating a very rough blockout for the machine in 3DS Max. The idea was to test the physics first, before creating a fully textured model. After setting up collision for the important elements, I had to setup a hinge joint so the rod could rotate around its pivot. This worked surprisingly good!
To prevent marbles from moving through before the tray moved back up, there's a blocking element at the top. Throughput on the machine was fairly decent, handling about 1 marble every 2 seconds.
