To get a better idea of how to animate my Rube Goldberg machine I explored how other people have done it in the past. I struggled to find 2D(ish) versions in YouTube as they were mostly very badly done 3d animations, this one is one of the few 2D ones I found:
I quite like the hand drawn style but the motion seems slow and not very dynamic, this is something I'll have to make sure to avoid when doing mine. To achieve this I will animate a better sense of weight and gravity to the objects in my machine.