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The Marble Clock Seconds got a Marble feeder (for now)
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- Published on Apr 15, 2026
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With this video we're a step closer to having a working marble clock that tells seconds. I've been wanting to make progress on it for a while but I was entering the same loop over and over. You know how it goes, you need to do something before you do something and then you never start so I went all in and decided to solve the issues all at once.
This marble sorter/elevator wasn't particularly difficult to make nor is it spectacular but it will allow me to tune the clock before I integrate it with the original marble clock and even though it looks awfully wanky and self-destructing I'm very happy with how it ended up behaving. It looks like it would work with just proper timming adjustment and maybe polishing a couple of points where the marbles can get stuck sometimes (famous last words). So I hope to make quick progress on it so it can be back and running.
As always love to hear your comments down below!
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That magnetic clutch has saved kilograms of parts from self destruction.
Megagrams! Once again, the press underestimates Flex Luthor.
I love how the original clock was done in like 3 to 5 videos in a few months, and how the added complexity of trying to get it to show the seconds is a whole series that's been going on for years. This clock is a metaphor for basically everything.
Exactly my thoughts. Now that I've done X, shouldn't be TOO much work for Y... this his how you get to PM hell.
It's also really inspiring. Complicated problems are mostly solved with complicated solutions. Getting stuck in and figuring it out is the real work.
this clock got really out of hands
@Destros2ndonei second that!
I think the law of inverse proportions applies here, the shorter duration of time to display the longer the work takes
Only on this channel do we get a CRANE as a side quest! You rock, Ivan!
If it barely needs to be done I'm here for it. Even if there are other more important and urgent things to do. 🫡
When you said you were building a crane I thought you were going to attach it to the ceiling.
Same.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating...
Ivan, you are a genius!
Completely mad, of course, but a genius nonetheless.
I just can't stop thinking about how, once he's got this working, he's going to have to build ANOTHER one to show two digits!
The other one should be way esier though since it will be ten times as slow, and he'll have solved all the potential issues by then
@EdenCoats Fixing all the potential issues with a marble machine? Is that even possible? :)
Reading this made me notice how he intentionally has the display on the far left of the machine so there’s rooms for the tens digit once he makes it
I think in the begining of the project he did state this @jakem7546
Okay what’s next…MILLISECONDS! 😂
parallel marble sorters, and air powered launchers, and light pulse flashing so you can see stills of fast flying marbles in the shape of a decimal would allow this to work.
@uncommonsense360oh, yeah that’s so simple, I wonder why he hasn’t done that yet… lol (sarcasm)
Don't give him any ideas! Though... that could be a video series for the next twenty-three years, so...
@ludditzthrellI’ve got an idea, what if, he used electricity to excite an array of specifically placed semiconductors to produce light and form numbers that can theoretically change at light speed, I wonder why he hasn’t thought of that…
@ryangagnon5489who knows?! 😂
I like the "1 Ton?" label. If I saw that in a shop, it would make me think a bit before using it.
Similar to Adam Savage’s “Safety Third” phrase.
Yea looking at it flex I would not do more than 299kg.
Yes, it’s a great joke if you’re in on it, but if someone who doesn’t know tries to lift something heavy and gets hurt doing so…
What I like the most about this project is how despite how overengineered the contraption is, you still manage to make each part look nice and coherent with the distinct design and colour scheme. The clock is a work of art as much as it is an engineering marble- I mean marvel.
- How convoluted and overengineered is your clock?
- Yes.
About eleven
Still not level Wintergatan 😅
8:39 "One fence on each side because we know we can't trust marbles" 😂😂😂
When seeing the "flush marble stack" issue, as a Wintergatan long time viewer, I'm "here we go again" XD
Absolute PTSD
This whole machine is giving me flashbacks. From the absolute overdesigning and insane requirements to the marbles going everywhere.
hopefully he dosnt require his clock to go on a world tour
But is it "tight"?
@Deddolo It must be one millisecond per millisecond or else its not tight enough XD
16:30 it needs a buffer so that the next second is immediately ready to move towards the front uniformly when the finger chopper pulls the marbles away, rather than hoping the marbles aren’t going to beat the finger chopper getting back in position to catch them
Agreed. It needs a pre-load, like the main clock.
And the actual mechanism for assembling the numbers needs to be comfortably capable of more than one number per second. Otherwise a buffer wouldn't be buffering anything.
Tis cycling through the same 60 values over and over, if the finger chopper kept the marbles in position they could have a 15 channel return to start and not news sorting.
@SamFisk when we made games in the 80's we would heavily leverage pre-computed values, sprites and other tricks to gain performance. Definitely could take inspiration from that. Still super impressive how Ivan's clock has come along. Meanwhile Martin is, ...
@SamFisk ALL the digits cycle through 10 value: 0-9 (except 10's of hours)... That's called a "split flip" display like the clock in Groundhog Day...
When you said about adjusting your desk and you have other heavy things I was totally expecting a sponsored section on adjustable desk, but instead a great crane was made.
when you first said you wanted to do seconds, I assumed there was no way it would be possible
and yet here you are very close to making that happen
I am impressed
HE HAS RETURNED!
Yay insane marble time
The climax of the crane building was hilarious - moving the marble machine 5 feet across the room 😂
12:55 ah, the Wintergatan issue.
12:27 getting some wintergatan PTSD here
I want to take a second and appreciate the engineering involved in making that clock tick without losing your marbles.
A True Engineering Marble!
Well played! You win one internet.
Congratulations Ivan! I've watched this baby grow from the start!
It's a legendary day when Ivan uploads
Honestly the glitching out clock at 17:16 would be a hilarious and poigniant art piece representing panic and anxiety when trying to finish something on a tight deadline
Idea : using marbles that glow in the dark, so that we can use it as a nightstand clock.
Congrats on your dedication, this will work!
The commitment on this evolving monster is mind blowing when you have to build a crane just to work on it.
I never really believed you'd go all the way to the end with this project... oh me of little faith! It just keeps getting more fantastic with time :) Thank you!
This thing got way bigger and way more out of hand than I ever imagined it would.
I love it
"Who had thought that timing was important in clock making" HAHAHA!
You're really a fantastic engineer. Thank you for inspiring us with such determination.
4:10 the absolute joy on that man’s face
I can’t believe I finally found another cool RUclipsr like Colin Furze 🎉🎉
lol… “let’s see if we can get this marble lifter in without having to disassemble anything.” Does and then proceeds to disassemble everything for upgrades. LOVE IT!!!
This channel and Wintergatan have collectively taught me that building machines based on marbles is always a bad idea. 😂
After describing the challenges at 0:17, I really thought this was going to be an announcement you were making a wrist watch version 🤣
"It can't go no where, it has to be!" - is the epitome of engineering
Ivan: I added [simple feature]!
Also Ivan: ...so I had to completely redesign and reassemble [three things].
Easy!
I found myself daydreaming about Ivan getting into sim racing. Imagine the rig he'd come up with considering his fabrication and engineering skills 🤯
The clock is our way of understanding what is going on inside Ivan’s brain. And I’m thinking he’s a mashup of M.C. Escher, R. Goldberg and the Protomolecule.
When you built the crane, i thought to myself, "it's ridiculous... I love it!"
Love the videos!
For your next project: a pick and place robot that can pick up all the dropped marbles, sort them by color and put them in separate bins!
10:06 - that monitor is *insane*
49 or 59 inch
Samsung oddesy
“Who would have thought that timing is important in clock making”😂🤣
I admire that your hiperfocus can last so long that you are actually finishing that project ;)
The bit that scares me about your videos is seeing that I have almost finished them.
I have a little bit to add from my work with automated packaging machines. Often the very rapid parts move at least in one direction by a spring. That way when something ends up somewhere unexpected, in my world mostly bread, parts are less likely to be damaged. One example might by your already redesigned finger chopper / marble swapper mechanism. Just ramp to pull a way as in that direction things should be sorted. Spring for return so nothing catastrophic happens when there are a few loose marbles here and there.
Commenting to boost. Definitely a good idea here!
Can't believe it, I thought this project is buried in the past :)
When this project started, i thought "that's really cool, but there's no way he actually does a seconds display, what a meme of a comment." Then Ivan went and listened to the suggestion, getting us here.
Now, i'm wringing my hands worriedly, knowing that if someone suggests a millisecond display it'll somehow happen, laws of thermodynamics be damned.
What a coincidence I just searched for this the other day thinking there hadn't been an update in a while lol
Next project: a robot that can disassemble/reassemble the clock for you as parts need to change.
Kinda fun to see how the randomness of more intricate functional additions create more complex problems in a way that is similar to Martin’s marble machine.
Can't wait until this is complete and we get to watch a 24-hour livestream of the clock!
You know just yesterday I was thinking "I wonder what happened to the marble clock?"
glad to see you're still working at it!
maybe its better instead of 1 single hopper to have a second stage where unsorted marbles get sorted into 2 hoppers for black and white and then you can take from those hoppers very fast. could also have multiple sorters to speed up refilling black and white hoppers
A masterpiece of iterative design. Also known as smoke testing, as in “Fire it up and see what smokes!”.😂👍
i am in love with this chaos machine. it feels like a demon of clockmaking. cant wait to see more!
17:29 - "J"
17:31 - "Jikes"
Comedy gold.
I am sure this will revolutionize how we display time one of these days.
It's always a good, entertaining day when Ivan drops a video.
"Who would have thought that timing is important in clock making?"
I hope a science miseum or something is lining up to display this at the end
You could consider adding a rubber band or some other elastic component to the display slider. That way if it jams the rubber band stretches and the marbles just build up and the cam wheel can still freely spin without destroying the rest of the mechanism. Essentially have a know failure point or “weakest link” where the consequences of it “failing” aren’t really a concern
On one hand I feel like there were many easier ways to make this, on the other is so cool exactly because it works like this
I have been waiting for this video since 1988. Well done, Ivan never gives up.
you are absolutely the hardest working youtuber on the website lmao
I don't often click the like button, I feel it is loke giving something 5 stars. But you and your clock always get a 5 from me.
Now you gotta check the marbles for cracks and chips. Build a rejection system for that. 😂😂😂
14:57 that was top tier Mr. Miranda. Top tier. Fantastic. Bravo. Accuracy of a… something super accurate
17:01 "Who would have thought timing was important in clockmaking?" Can I quote you on that??? 😀😀😀
It's hilarious that you have a 300 pound device that counts seconds. I love the dedication to the project. I can only imagine how loud it would be to run the other clock and this one at the same time.
At this point, I can't tell who has the more wildly ambitious marble machine project, Ivan or Martin (Wintergatan). Cheers!
I've always felt like it belongs in an art gallery or something!! Looking good
It's not a clock, it's a timemachine. When he's done he's gonna ask himself where the time went 😂
Every time I see an update to this, it makes my own engineering brain itch. If I were doing it, I would sort black and white at the bottom, then run two color sorted elevators into two separate color specific hoppers to direct feed as needed. the stochastic sorter at the top of the elevator chain seems like such a process time waster. But I'm not doing anything like this, so I like the way you do it more than the way I don't!
This project is getting insane. You will need to give it to a museum when you are done
Your genius is rivaled only by you tenacity and patience!
I've been watching since before the big tank. Thanks for keeping the same energy this whole time!
Next project - a decibel meter with the screen display in marbles!
I am amazed on how much you use a real hamer now. They grow up so fast.
The one thing I have learned from this series is that I would choose to work with rabid weasels over marbles.. 😂
this is the only man I would believe if he said to me that he is going to build the iron man suit
You should make an accessible version of this. Make a segment display with the marbles that changes like a normal mechanical segment display, then have a track inside that constantly moves marbles to get the authentic loud marble sounds.
When you said you were going to build a crane - I figured you'd just scale up the big 3d printer and just frame the entire building 10ft up, so you'd have a 3-axis mechanism that could reach *everything*
Is it just me or your English is better than before? ❤
Seeing how hard this is gives me absolute awe for every industrial machinery running much faster.
How much tuning must go into those...
I honestly dont understand why you have to synchronize the front with the rest and not just keep a backlog of marbles (you know the number to be displayed even before that time hits) and extend the face-thingy to stop any marbles from escaping during the swap. Anyway seems like great progress, good to see.
the black white sorter working on the first try was a thing of beauty
Agreed. Had to think a few of these working together would have made life easier back in the days of trying to get all the B & W marbles needed to make up HH:MM digits.
Every "picked-up" marble can be used; no wasted "rejecting"...
"and now I know how heavy my table is"
That's not something you usually hear in a RUclips video.
My god man. I swear the thing gets more terrifying each new episode. Incredibke work though!
It's almost there Iván!
Fellas, Imma be real with y'all. I'm starting to suspect this might not be the most practical way to keep time
Why not leave the black marbles out? The space void of marbles is already black. You'd need a lot fewer marbles and it would simplify things a lot. No sorting, fewer marbles to catch on things, less pressure on various parts.
Now everything you build will have a connection point for the crane added to the design. 😁
I've been following you on this project for so long now that I really hope you'll see it through to the point where you can display milliseconds. And then, that you can minimize it to a wristwatch.
Jokes aside. Again.... WOW.
And then I realized that he needs another whole digit
Oh yes, the ton question mark is perfect
When you are finally done with this project I would love to see a "what I would change" video where you highlight all the things you would change to improve it's over all design start to finish if you were to build a second one. Complete with neet CAD drawings and animations.
We had a 40" CRT TV with a little indentation on either side as handles. 300lbs instantly turned into a portable TV. Sorted!
Use that 1980's technique here. Just add a wrist strap to it and call it a watch. Sorted!
bro built a whole crane
massive relief to see this project getting some progress
its always a good day when I see you upload, but this clock is special
I love this series, showing the complexity of engineering, the trial and error of the design phase, the updates that have to go into the overall design. I also love how you present the changes, putting the new sorting mechanism in without taking things apart, only to have to take apart the entire assembly in order to install the design updates, truly a masterpiece of a video. Im looking forward to the next one, good luck Ivan.
this is actually one of the coolest projects on yt rn
I just checked your channel yesterday wondering if I had missed an update on the clock because it had been so long since the last one. Now I know why! What a major overhaul!