I've lost interest in watching his videos due to the new direction of the marble machine. I enjoyed the previous one as an art piece but then Martin got obsessed with perfection and turned it into a soulless bland engineering project with a frustratingly poor understanding of engineering.
I still watch his videos and in my opinion he has seem to improved a bit when it comes to understanding engineering. He still has some obsession with perfection but not as much back in the MMX era (the current machine is actually called MM3)
I just couldn't forgive him after he tried to design his own crappy version of pillow blocks. It was at that point that I knew the machine wasn't going to be either an amazing art piece or an amazing piece of engineering.
I also miss the old version. that marble lift was so cool. seems a shame to have scrapped it instead of making some music, whatever it wound up being.
on the other hand, I assume when this version gets further along it'll start coming to together like the last.
Oh he is STILL at it? Wow, that's 5 years? Or more? Gotta give him this: he's persistent! I watched him at first, even if it's infuriating at times, but eventually even I lost interest, and I build shit like that myself. No marble machine, but giant mechanical calculators, a pneumatic organ, boats etc But I think that's what happens when musicians fabricate stuff. I know one who builds his dream guitar for 16 years. Next year he'll be done. So he says. But then again, so he says for 15 years.
Both machines are on display at a museum in Germany. Volunteers have iterated on MMX to the point where is can play music https://www.smmk.de/marble-machines.html