I finally decided to make my own Rolling Ball Sculpture (RBS). For those of you not familiar with the term, a Rolling Ball Sculpture is a kinetic sculpture which uses balls of an appropriate size and material, and track for them to roll on. The track has many fun shapes and movements to give the overall visual appearance of the sculpture. Quite often there will also be one or more lifts to bring the ball back up to the top as well as other pieces moving around. There are a zillion different types and styles of rolling ball sculptures. This one uses aluminum track and frame, and six 3/4″ steel balls. The lifts are the “auger” or “cork-screw” type which raise the balls with a large, screw-shaped mechanism. I have also added 
light effects, triggered by switches along the track. It is very unlike any other RBS I have ever seen which made it an interesting challenge as my first one ever.
I first encountered the RBS in a cool little town called Ferndale, which is up in Northern California, just off Highway 101. I was walking through town one day after enjoying that year’s Kinetic Sculpture Race and encountered the coolest work of art I had ever seen. It was sitting in the front window of a store or art gallery along the main street. It had whirly gigs and all these little balls rolling in every direction and being carried back up in all sorts of different lifts. My attention was grabbed as 
if I had walked into a telephone pole. I stood there watching this wonder of art and machinery for about 20 minutes before going inside to see several more of the same sort of contraption whizzing away. I studied each one for a loooooong time before I realized I had been there for ever. So nearly embarrassed, I had to leave and go find the rest of my family and bring them back to see these things.
Ever since then, I have wanted to make my own RBS. That was the Summer of 1983. Now, being the Summer of 2004, I have actually embarked on the project.
The Rolling Ball Sculptures I saw that day were the work of Stan Bennett, who has been creating Rolling Ball Sculptures for a long time. He is considered by me to be the pioneer of the art since his sculptures were the first I had ever seen, and so far are some of the best ones I have seen. In all honesty, though, the art of Rolling Ball Sculptures has been around for a lot longer than myself and Stan. Currently there are a number of RBS artists in the world. Several of the best are from various parts of Europe as well as Japan. However, other than Stan’s work, I have only found fairly old and stale information on the Internet about these wonderous works of art and science.
So to freshen up the Rolling Ball Sculpture world a little, here are some pictures of my first Rolling Ball Sculpture. These were taken throughout the Summer of 2004 as sort of a documentary of my progress. I will be adding more pictures and information as I go along. Hopefully, I can stir up interest in the subject again.
I have always been an electronics nerd. And I have an interest in physics and come from a somewhat artistic gene pool as well. So when I decided to start building my RBS, I had some ideas that I hadn’t seen in other RBSes before. Of course I scoured the Internet for several weeks before deciding which materials to use and what sort of gizmos to add. As it 
turned out, my choice of materials was driven by my patience. I was having the hardest time locating a source for #8-#10 copper wire, but nearly every hardware store in the area carries 1/2″ by 1/16″ extruded aluminum strips. So I went with aluminmum.
Overall, aluminum is a little more expensive than copper. It also assembles completely differently than copper. Instead of bend and solder, it’s bend, drill and screw. But it’s pretty easy to work with. The hardest part has been finding 1/2″ aluminum spacers in usable quantities and at a reasonable price. I’ve had to make a few dozen of them out of brass tube. I eventually found a source for threaded spacers, which are really 
nice to work with because I can use two short screws rather than a long screw and a nut to hold the track together – it’s much nicer looking.
But the part I really liked was my idea to use acrylic rods and ultra-bright LEDs for light effects. About 25 or so different LEDs and combinations provide a very colorful accent to a very monochromatic, yet reflective structure.
My RBS has simple track features. I wanted smooth, flowing movement and being the novice I am, I opted to not build many track gizmos on my first one. It has two cork-screw lifts and four tracks. At the top of each lift is a “drop switch” which distributes the balls to the tracks evenly. Since I like color and light, I’m adding a lot of LEDs that are controlled by switches on the track. Some of them only light when triggered. Others are always on, but get brighter when triggered. And some will be on at full brightness all the time.
