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The Kid Should See This

The 115,000+ piece K’NEX Ball Machine at The Works Museum

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K’NEX enthusiast Austin Granger of the YouTube Channel Austron built a giant K’NEX Ball Machine at The Works Museum in Bloomington, Minnesota. The structure is made with more than 115,000 K’NEX pieces and includes more than 850 feet of track. It’s an expansion of his previous K’NEX ball machine for the museum. From The Works:

We asked Austin what advice he’d share with young visitors who want to build machines like this one. He said to start by challenging yourself to build the strongest towers, bridges and other structures you can. The frame of your machine needs to be strong in order to withstand moving parts. Once your structures are strong, work on building even higher and longer structures – bridges that span longer distances and towers that reach the ceiling. The next step – add in the kinetic pieces. It involves a lot of trial and error to learn the skills and understand how to engineer with K’NEX at this scale.

the works - k'nex ball machine
the works - k'nex ball machine
The Works' K'nex Ball Machine
Find K’NEX and K’NEX Education sets on Amazon.

Previously on TKSST and built inside Granger’s room in 2012: Clockwork, a 40,000-piece K’NEX ball machine.

Plus: Steel track rolling ball sculptures by kinetic artist Tom Harold, The LEGO Great Ball Contraption: 17 different modules of incredible, and Andrew Gatt’s Paper Roller Coasters.

via The Awesomer.

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