Wood Trick Wooden Marble Run Spiral Electric Motorized - Wooden 3D Puzzles for Adults to Build - 13x13 - Roller Coaster Mechanical Wooden Model Kits for Adults to Build

Assembly was a challenge, broke a piece or two. Instructions are CAD generated diagrams, looks complex but easy to figure out. Takes some tuning when completed. Be sure to sand any friction surfaces, especially the cam end of the pushrods for the marble ladder. Once tuned and leveled mine ran over 10 minutes with no intervention from me. High quality plywood and a very high end laser make this a great kit and a good time!

This was my 1st wooden puzzle. It came with 11 sheets of wooden parts, motor, sandpaper, wax (to lubricate the moving parts), steel balls, and instructions. Everything was packaged well. The instructions are very well explained. The kit arrived on May 10, 2023 and I finished it on May 15, 2023. I worked on it everyday, my guess is it took my about 20 hours. As you can see in the video I painted all of the support and gear parts and left all the track part unpainted. I had to assemble and disassemble the wooden steps and the cams that moves them many times to get correct. But I made sure they worked smoothly before I moved to the next step. The next challenge was the trip mechanism. It was trial and error until I got it to work right. The next challenge was what I call the cascade run. What happened was the 1st ball wouldn't move to start the run. What I did was modify the 1st step so it started off center to start the run. Then the balls would fall as expected. The next challenge was on what I call the roller coaster run, a lot of the balls would jump the track on the last turn. I reasoned it was because the ball had so much speed coming around the last turn, the ball would frequently fly off and get lost. You may be able to see in the video the extra piece I glued to the outside rail. Now the balls don't fly off. Don't expect to put it all together then put the balls in and push the button and expect everything to work with no problems. Tip: When testing put a towel under your model, you won't lose as many balls that way. Also don't get into a hurry and test each step before going to the next.

I'm a pretty avid marble run builder. Prior to this kit I've successfully constructed 11 marble runs: by ROKR, UGears, iDventure and Wood Trick, so I consider myself fairly accomplished at this hobby. The Roller Coaster marble run by Wood Trick was just amazing: perfectly designed, a joy to build, and worked the first try with no "tweaking". So I was pretty excited, to say the least, when the company offered another kit. This Wood Trick kit uses a "stair-step" method for raising the marbles to their highest points (as do two of the ROKR kits) and when I looked at the design for the mechanism, I was concerned about design flaws in the system which could lead the mechanism to self-destruct (I'm a retired engineer). The design uses rotating cams on a camshaft with push rods sitting on top of the cams which drive the pistons up and down in a cage (at least in theory) as the camshaft rotates. My take on the design was that any substantial friction experienced by the pistons would cause the push rods, instead of being pushed up and down to be forced laterally compromising the integrity of the mechanism. I spent two weeks carefully constructing the kit working a little each day (the joy is in the building!). Recognizing the problems with the design I was careful to sand and wax all the moving parts as well as the cage through which they moved. Sure enough, when I started the motor one or more pistons jammed, the push rods were deflected sidewise, the resulting lateral force on the cam created a torque on the camshaft that completely splintered the camshaft. The only outcome that was different from what I had anticipated was the camshaft broke instead of the push rods. Ack! This is an expensive kit and I truly expected the same level of engineering put in to their previous kit. The rest of the kit is mostly well-designed and it's still a joy to build but I'm left with a completed run that can't be used. The stair-step mechanism can work, if engineered properly. The ROKR design for the same mechanism worked flawlessly. UPDATE: I was able to reconstruct the cam shaft and after significant "tweaking" the model works as designed. NOTE: It's critical that parts 87, 88, 89, .... are waxed thoroughly where they meet part 43 (see diagram) to make this assembly operate smoothly. This isn't mentioned in the instructions.

This was my second kit from Wood Trick. I assembled the Galaxy set a few months ago, and wanted to try this Spiral kit. I read reviews calling out "obvious design flaws" in the cam system that moves the stairs up and down. Cam shaft breaking, wire modifications to the lifting rods, etc. So, I paid maybe some more attention to that part of the kit. I smoothed the stairs, the connecting rods and the lower "forks" that ride on the cam wheels. Smoothed the cam wheels and waxed everything well. After assembly, I tried the cam set-up by hand. It turned and worked smooth and easy. When I completed assembly, there was no hint of a problem with the stairs. The problem I had, was with the outer return run from the trap, back to the pick-up deck. The ball was just coming down too fast and would often jump the last corner. I lightly sanded the top inside corners of the rails, to let the ball ride deeper between the rails and that slowed it down just enough to where it "almost" never jumps the track anymore. Running this kit for an hour or so, you may still find some places here and there that may need a little tweaking or smoothing, but right from the first start, it worked fine. All in all, I am very satisfied with the kit, impressed with the way everything fits together, and the clear instructions. (And I did not break a single piece while removing or assembling it).

Cuando lo monten en regalo Navidad

Hat Spaß gemacht es aufzubauen würde ich immer wieder Kaufen.

Pour passionnés

the Wood finish was very bad had to sand every peas it was full of little splinters so i had to sand each peas or i would have my fingers full of little splinters. It took a long time to assemble them

War mein erstes 3D-Holzpuzzle. Am Anfang war ich ein wenig skeptisch...aber mit jedem weiteren Teil wuchs meine Begeisterung. Wird nicht mein Letztes sein