A maker studio for balls. Drop a fistful of steel into a space-filling curve, tilt, and it sounds like rain.
The floor is a Hilbert curve — one continuous wall folded to fill the whole tray with the longest possible path. Balls can't roll free; they cross wall after wall, each crossing a tiny click, hundreds at once = surf. The maze isn't decoration. It's an acoustic comb — the longest road that fits in a box, so the rain never stops.
8 mm steel on a rigid floor: the sharpest ASMR, a beach-pebble roar. The exact sound this studio started from.
Wooden balls, or a damped floor: soft, rounded, rainstick. The bedside-quiet edition.
Glass spheres: a mid, crystalline ting — ice in a glass. Sprinkle a few for top-end sparkle.
One connector. Everything snaps. A six-year-old builds a ball-run across the table, then closes the loop so it runs forever.
Straights, curves, ramps, funnels, spiral drops — all press-fit on one 40 mm grid, no glue, no screws.
A flexible printed belt scoops balls back to the top; printed gears drive paddle-wheels. Gravity down, belt up — endless.
End any run in a snap-in Hilbert mini-tray, so the marble-run finishes in the rain.
The plan is to sell the spheres themselves — curated by material and size, matched to the tray designed for their sound. The intended value is the curation, the pairing, and a reason to hold one.
| Material | Sizes | Sound | Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steel | 8 · 14 · 16 mm | Bright rain → deep surf | Cold, heavy, precise |
| Glass | mixed | Crystalline ting | Clear, light, luminous |
| Wood | mixed | Soft muffled clack | Warm, quiet, tactile |
A design for a motorized, screen-free noise generator that loops like steady rain.
The concept uses a slow drum to tumble steel over a curve. Designed for a desk, focus, sleep, and restless hands: no app or speaker, just physics.
Prototype design — not built yet