In the beginning of this year I became aware about something called a Great Ball Contraption, GBC for short. Basically it is a ‘machine’ that has the sole task of transporting balls from one module to the other. When I saw the video from the one that was built by Akiyuki, I just had to built it.

I spent several months ordering all the parts that I was missing in my collection or were held-up in a model that I didn’t want to tear-down yet.

Akiyuki did not provide any building instructions, there was just the video of this amazing machine. Luckily TheRebricker has spent a lot of time on the Akiyuki’s GBC and has posted part lists on Rebrickable accompanied by instruction videos on Youtube. There is also a topic on Eurobricks ([MOC Review]Akiyuki’s Ball Factory) where people building this machine are posting images, videos and are asking questions on the build of the GBC.

Over the last one and a half month I have been slowly building each of the 12 modules following the instructions provided by TheRebricker. It has been at some points a bit frustrating to time to get some of the timings in the whole setup correct (still need to fix some timing issues), but overall it has just been an enormous amount of fun…

Progress videos

After each module was complete I made short videos showing the progress

Module 1 (Battery Box) and 2 (Initial Drive Assembly)

Module 3 (Load Turner)

Why did I shoot this video in portrait mode ?!

Module 4 (Bucket Wheel)

Module 5 (Empty Bucket Mover)

Module 6 (Load Shifter)

Module 7 (Bucket Unloader and Conveyor System) https://youtu.be/JRvF5–dC4k

Module 8 (Ball Dumper)

Module 9 (Ball Lifter)

Module 10 (Ball Loader)

Module 11 (Spiral Lift)

Module 12 (Ball Return Conveyor and Hoppers)

Future GBC modules

Akiyuki has built many more GBC modules and the TheRebricker is busy on making instructions for these as well. So I will have more hours of building and viewing fun ahead :). The next one that has instructions available is the Invisible Lift. Also a very interesting module is the ‘LEGO GBC module : Lifter triggered by a stuck ball’ also by Akiyuki.