Marbles gaming surface

My son is just coming to age for playing marbles, and we recently bought him a set.
The thing is: he doesn’t know how to play marbles… so we had to teach him :slight_smile:

On this occasion, I discovered there’s more than one way to play…

Personally, I was playing “long distance” over concrete, aiming for a hole or dip in the ground.
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My wife, on the other hand played on manhole covers, aiming at the center, carefully navigating through the maze it formed

Today, she found this product:

basically, it’s a silicone mat that mimics one of those manhole covers, but it can be folded and is probably a lot lighter for a kid to carry :stuck_out_tongue:

So, what do you do when you have a CNC and your wife shows you something like this? :slight_smile:

The design is pretty straightforward and I used one of the pictures as a canvas

Then it’s just a quite simple machining, although F360 had a really hard time navigating through this maze trying to build the adaptative clearing toolpath


Note: I found a better/faster way to machine this, but that’ll be for the next one…

Quick coat of paint, and it’s good to go…

Nex step is to test this out tomorrow with the kids, and maybe if I feel brave, try to machine a mold and make a silicone cast…

I made this one out of MDF, do you think it MDF can be used as a mold for a silicone cast? or should I use plywood? hardwood maybe?

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That’s one game I never learned growing up. We went straight from Jack’s to poker.

We also played a ton of aggravation and yahtzee.

That’s absolutely brilliant!
Marbles for us was always a circle drawn in the dirt.

MDF is perfect - but you will have to seal it well first, and that can be a bit tricky - I’ve had a lot of luck with auto body filler/primers that flash off very quickly. Apply it in lots of thin coats is the trick.

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Hey, nice! Copy and paste to enter this in the V1E GO Maker Faire… or at least post the link to it.

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you could cast a resin slab to mill as a mould

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That’s actually a great idea

First test for the mold went pretty badly

Guess I need to re-surface the bed again -_-

Second try is a bit better…

This time I only carved the “tracks”, without the lip around

Then I added the “ring” I salvaged from the previous failed attempt

And finally I contoured the whole inner and outer perimeter to get a straight edge

Now I need to sand this and seal it somehow…

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Also, F360 is giving me some weird volumes/weights, I’m not sure if this is correct…

632g (1.4 pounds) seems like a lot for a 350x350x6mm (13.7’ square, 0.25’ thick) rubber mat o_O
Any idea if this is correct?

I did not order the silicone yet, but ordering 1kg just for one mat seems a bit excessive o_O

EDIT: bringing the total thickness down to 4.5mm reduces the weight to 402g

I could believe that 1kg. I bet it feels pretty hefty at 1/4" thick.

I’m thinking about painting some epoxy into the mdf and re-milling it after it’s dry…
Would that work as a sealent ?