Lego Marble Pump

I was inspired to build this by Matthias Wandel's Marble Machines:

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/marbles/index.html

I used his design of the marble pump to build my own out of Lego.

The pump is built in three sections to facilitate servicing.  Its operation is very smooth.  It is set to pump at a rate of about one marble every two seconds.  It currently supports a collumn of about 30 marbles.  I have not tested it to failure to determine how high the marbles can be pump.  I've spent about 15 hours on this project.

I plan on adding falling mechanisms and tracks to the machine in the future.

Roy Nelson