Star Wars Marble Run
For Advanced 3D Drafting course (taken Fall '25), designed Star Wars themed marble run in SolidWorks, then fabricated it through the UVM FabLab.
Last semester, I took John Sangster's Advanced 3D Drafting course, where the term project was to design a themed marble run in SolidWorks and iteratively 3D print components through the UVM FabLab. Our group chose a Star Wars theme, and—since we were all excited about the project—decided to go a bit overboard. Our final design incorporated many classic Star Wars elements, including the Death Star, X-wing, TIE fighter, and more. Our design featured two paths—each spanning nearly the full 600 mm height—with the first path feeding into an elevator that returns the marble to the top to initiate the second path in a single continuous run. We prototyped extensively throughout the semester (totaling nearly 5 kg of printed parts!) and elected to include Arduino components to manage the marble elevator and launcher.