Spiral Marble Run Electrical Motorized

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).

Though this did need some powt-vukls tweaking, it was a nice build. Drive shaft needs to be VERY WELL WAXED. I snapped arm 2 before I noticed it caught. After that, I went back and rewaxed and it was fine! If you fit the pieces back the way they were with some glue, it works well enough.The pieces all were sturdy enough, but definitely take care on long, narrow parts. I did snap some of the outside marble track from pushing down on the middle of it, but that also glued back together smoothly. One actual design flaw that I might point out is that Some of the 90° turns on the marble track do allow the marbles to go off still sometimes. Could just be I need a little more tweaking or from the glued track 😅

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 is my second WoodTtrick marble run puzzle/maze. Like my first the "roller coaster" it was challenging and fun to assemble. The use of a watchmaker's hammer definitely helped. Some of the parts are quite fragile and I broke a couple removing them from their respective sheets, fortunately spares were provided for the few i broke. After completing the maze a few days ago I am still tinkering with the arm to get it to pick up the steel balls. It seems as if this maze's operation is susceptible to "tweaking" when picking up and moving it that can disrupt it's smooth operation. However, overall very satisfied with the kit and quite frankly amazed with the design and engineering that goes into it. I highly recommend.