Cardboard Pinball Machine Design Build

A shallow cardboard box lid or a cut-down box for the playing field

Small cardboard tubes, bottle caps, and folded cardboard for bumpers

Rubber bands for the launcher

Pushpins or small nails

Hot glue gun (adult supervised)

Paint, markers, and stickers for decorating

Marbles

Books for tilting the playing field

Find a shallow cardboard box lid — about 12 by 18 inches is ideal. The sides should be at least 2 inches high to keep the marble inside.

Design the layout on paper first. Where will the marble launch from? Where are the bumpers? Where do you score points? Planning saves rebuilding later.

Prop one end of the tray up on a book to create a slope. The marble needs to roll from top to bottom by gravity.

Glue obstacles inside the tray using hot glue. Bottle caps make excellent round bumpers the marble bounces off. Cardboard tube halves create ramps. Folded cardboard strips create walls and channels.

Build a launcher at the bottom end. Stretch a rubber band between two pushpins stuck through the cardboard. Pull the band back with the marble and release to launch.

Decorate the entire machine — paint the surface, label score zones, add themed artwork. This is where the art meets the engineering.

Test with a marble. Adjust obstacle positions until the gameplay is fun. Some areas should be easy to reach, others hard.

Write point values in different zones and play for high scores.

The testing and adjusting phase is the most important part. Every bumper change alters how the marble moves through the entire machine.

Make obstacles varied — fixed bumpers, ramps that redirect, and narrow slots that are hard to hit.

This combines art, engineering, physics, and game design into one project.

Challenge friends to play your machine, then play theirs. It is even more fun as a design competition.