Marble Maze Cube (simple) - Plans

Time for another plans post! Here is a construction manual with plans for a very simple version of my marble maze cube. The idea is a three-dimensional, hidden maze through which one has to guide a marble or steel ball.
This cube contains one of the most simple mazes possible, where each "floor" can be solved alone to get to the next one. More complicated versions contain more changes between the floors.
Be sure to watch the time-lapse video of the simple construction process below before reading the manual! A 3D stereoscopic version of the video is available here.

Marble maze cube, time-lapse of construction.

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Note: The plans presented here are for a cube of 55 mm in each dimension, for a marble of 10-12 mm diameter. The cube requires wood strips of 5 mm x 13 mm. You may use another width than 13 mm if you can't obtain this size, but it should be at least 1 mm more than the diameter of the marble.

Contents
1. Materials and Tools
2. PDF Plans for download
3. Construction Manual

1. Materials and Tools

Materials

• Plywood or fiberboard (thickness 3 mm, approx. 15x20cm)
• Wood strip, 13 mm x 6 mm, approx. 50 cm
• Wood glue (PVA)
• Paper glue stick
• Superglue (optional)

Tools

• Jigsaw or scollsaw
• Hand saw (e.g. Japanese saw, optional)
• Drilling tool
• Drill, ⌀ ≈ 2-3mm
• Sandpaper (fine ≈ P100, very fine ≈ P220)
• Black-white printer

2. PDF Plans for download

Plans for the parts are available for download as PDF.

Figure 1: Plans for Marble maze cube (simple). Use high quality PDF for printing. Download PDF.

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3. Construction Manual

The marble maze cube is a small and easy project, taking no more than 2 hours. Necessary steps are cutting the parts, glueing the cube from bottom to top, and finally sanding the surface.

Step 1: Printing the plans

Download the PDF plans. Print the plans on A4 paper.

Step 2: Gluing plans onto material

Cut out the lower part of the plans sheet, containing the 4 squares, and glue it onto your plywood or fiberboard using the paper glue stick.

Step 3: Sawing the parts

Saw out the square parts from the plywood or fiberboard. Saw the grey holes into parts (2) and (3) by first drilling holes into the corners of the grey areas, and then using the jigsaw.
Saw out some 13 mm wide strips from the plywood or fiberboard, and cut them into the parts listed on the plans sheet (first section).
Saw the remaining part (second section on the plans) from 13 mm x 5 mm wood strips.

Step 4: Removing paper from plywood / fiberboard

To remove the paper from the sawed out parts, moisten it, wait half a minute or so, and peel it off. Remove remains using the very fine sandpaper.

Step 5: Assembling the cube

Assemble the cube by gluing things together, starting from bottom to top. Follow the scheme shown in Figure 3, below. The plans also show the placement of pieces, from bottom (1) to top (4).
Progress step by step and use clamps to fix each added part until the glue dried. You can use superglue for the interior parts (steps 2, 5 and 8 in Figure 2) if you are impatient.

Figure 3: Construction steps for the marble maze box. Steps 1, 4, 7: adding wood strip parts; Steps 2, 5, 8: adding inner plywood parts; Steps 3, 6, 9: adding plywood between "floors".

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Step 6: Sanding

Sand the box to have a smooth surface and rounded edges and corners. Start with the coarser sandpaper for corners and edges and end with the finer for the surface.

If you experiment with other, more complicated mazes, you will discover some rules that restrict the possibilities, and that it is sometimes not so easy to find a maze that fills all 27 sub-cubes.

Enjoy tinkering! Your feedback is welcome.
Yours sincerely,
Turnvater Janosch