14,348,907 Revolutions

That's how many times the motor must turn the first gear to get the last gear to rotate once. With a series of 15 gears with an average gear ratio of 1:3, it takes 3^15 or 14,348,907 revolutions for the Endless Gear Machine to complete one full cycle.

Here's a timelapse of the machine running for 10 minutes at 10x speed.

Designed as a simple mathematical art piece, the Endless Gear Machine takes its time to show you the power of exponential growth. At one second per revolution, it takes approximately 166 days to complete one full cycle. Utilizing the gearbox motor that comes with the Bambu Lab Marble Run Kit, you too can print out and run your own machine that takes an agonizingly long time to complete a meaningless task.

Each profile provided has all the parts laid out for ease of printing for those of you with Bambu Lab Printers/Bambu Studio. For other slicers/printers, here is the list of components needed (downloadable through the ‘Raw Model Files’ button):

• 1x Base
• 2x Rods
• 2x Spacers
• 1x Power Gear
• 14x Gears

The assembly is simple, the motor slots in to the base with the small nub fitting into the relevant hole on the Base. After that, you can take a look at this top-down image to see how to assemble the Gears. The Rods are slightly loose and can be glued to the Base if desired.

With the motor in the back, the Gear has the small gear facing the front. Only the left Rod needs the Spacers. The left Rod has its Gears set to the back while the right Rod has its set to the front. The coloring on the Gears is optional and the placement is arbitray, they're main purpose is to help show you how much each gear has rotated, if at all.

Enjoy letting time pass by as this machine toils endlessly to accomplish nothing fruitful, but still something special.