This very large wall mounted rolling ball sculpture was built for Colorado Springs Childrens Hospital. The inspiration for this was the George Rhoads sculpture at the Denver Childrens hospital. The parents of “Noah” were at this hospital for many days and nights as Noah was born with a congenital heart condition. As they sat around the large hospital, waiting for procedure after procedure to be finished, they often found themselves in the lobby watching the George Rhoads RBS operate. The good news is that Noah was able to be fully healed and is now an adult studying to be a doctor himself. His parents, upon hearing that a Colorado Springs hospital was to be built decided to give back to the hospital and the community as a whole and donate resources to have an RBS built for the COS location.

That is when I was contacted to build a rolling ball sculpture for the COS hospital. At the time I had a 3D printer to be able to print up quite a few personal customizations to make this fun. I printed off several flat gravity wells, the bears holding a heart (for Noah’s heart condition), rocking/moving hearts, a violin (Noah’s instrument), balloons (for the hospitals logo) and some smaller bears to represent their location near the Rocky Mountains.

Most of the tracks on this RBS have guardrail to prevent any balls from coming off. With 5 different tracks, this one was really fun to build. See a tall skinny coil, a long vertical zig-zag, a loop d’ loop, a large free spinning tipping arm (with a bear attached), a ball collecting tipping arm, a flat spiral and lots of back-and-forth tracks. The balls on this RBS are acetyl resin, 1-1/2″ in diameter.

Set to run slowly, this RBS is now in the lobby of the Colorado Springs hospital for parents and children alike to enjoy as they spend their time at this hospital.

My shop is not that large, and it was impossible to put this one on a wall – so the video is taken as it is – attached to the mounts I used for building.

100% stainless steel, TIG welded.