Description
- 【High-Quality Material and Perfect Detail】This is a perfectly designed DIY kit that requires your hands-on work to complete. This mechanical wooden puzzle toy uses precision laser cutting of high- quality plywood, which is safe and convenient
- 【Realistic design and Amazing Charm】Like the real design of a roller coaster, it is a great surprise. It has elegant lines radian and automatic shunting fork. After the assembly, the ball can be rolled along the track by the track
- 【Educational Toy and Fantastic Game】Marble Run is a fantastic educational toy that provides hours of fun while combining basic learning skills with coordination and organizational skill. In addition, the successful installation will produce a sense of accomplishment
- 【Ideal Gift and Fine Ornament】This is an amazing gift for any occasion. At Christmas, new year, birthday, Valentine’s day as a gift to a boyfriend, son, father, or grandfather. In addition, it can be used as a family decoration, in the study, on the desk
- 【Matters Needing Attention】Before beginning to assemble, carefully observe each part, do not appear missing situation. Follow the steps shown in the instructions or you will otherwise fail orbit due to a violation of physical principles.
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Marc –
Another challenging and satisfying wooden mechanical kit from Rokr. I found this to be more involved and difficult than the Rokr Pendulum Clock I built previously. In addition to a base, support structures and multiple marble ramps, the marble run is made of up three complex subassemblies: a hand cranked gear mechanism, an escalator mechanism and a stacked ramp mechanism with swing gates. Not only are there a lot of small parts in each subassembly, but the final building stage of each involves a tricky bit of alignment – you have to keep track of multiple slots, holes and freely moving pieces. They all have to line up perfectly in order for everything to click into place. The gear mechanism wasn’t too hard. But finishing up the escalator and especially the swing gate subassemblies was quite challenging. If you’re mechanically inclined and/or used to intricate model kits, this challenge can be enjoyable. I’m both, so it was deeply satisfying. But I can see how others could find these alignment tasks tedious and/or frustrating.
As in my review of the Rokr Pendulum Clock, the quality of the laser cutting is impressive. Also mirroring my earlier review, Rokr includes extras of many of the small parts. This is a really nice touch that more companies should emulate.
More so than the pendulum clock kit (which is mostly made up of parts oriented in a series of stacked, parallel planes), the marble run has a lot going on in three dimensions. There are structures hanging off other structures at right angles. Which means that assembly sometimes requires applying force in multiple directions, or against structures that aren’t that easy to get a finger behind to apply counter pressure. It’s difficult to put into words, but suffice it to say you need some fairly decent finger dexterity and hand to eye coordination.
ETA: I should say that while the Rokr Marble run was a more complex build than their pendulum clock, it didn’t require nearly as much post-construction tuning/adjustments to run properly. That’s a big part of the challenge with the clock model. With the marble run, it pretty much worked from the start. Aside from intermittent sticking of the escalator compartments (referenced in the Tips section, below), all it needed were a few tweaks to the ramps here and there when marbles would initially get hung up.
Once assembled, the marble run is delightful in operation. There’s really a lot going on. In addition to ramps, chutes and the aforementioned escalator (truly, a marvel of engineering), the complex design allows marbles to do different things depending on whether they are the first, second or third object to travel down a particular path. The more you watch, the more complex and varied the mechanism becomes.
Tips:
A razor knife is very helpful to slice through those tiny sections of plywood that are deliberately left uncut (to hold the pieces in place during packing/shipping). It’s possible to detach them without a knife, but you’re more likely to damage them.
A lot of these pieces look *very* similar, are complex in shape, and must be oriented correctly. Confirm part numbers before separating and re-confirm as you put them together. Pay particular attention to the parts on the thinnest plywood sheet, labeled sheet “G”. There are dozens of tiny wooden ‘pins’ that all look very similar, especially after they are separated from the sheet. But they have different lengths which are critical to proper assembly.
Rokr provides a wax stick to lubricate certain moving parts. Definitely lubricate all the areas identified in the instructions. But one place not identified are the fronts and backs of the individual compartments that carry the marbles up the escalator. They rise and fall right next to each other. Occasionally one gets hung up on another and doesn’t descend when it’s supposed to. Take a few moments *before* final assembly of the escalator mechanism to apply a bit of wax to where the compartments slide past each other. I tried doing it after assembly and by that point it’s really impossible to get the wax everywhere it’s needed.
Chris Jorgensen –
bought for 10 year old. He loved putting it together and was about 6 -7 hours of challenge and fun. Running the marbles once assembled is limited however. The light wood pieces break and lose their connections fairly quickly. We started using glue to keep some pieces together, but just not really built to last. Maybe next gen. will be better..
Looks great on a shelf.
Nočnica Fee –
I have built several pre-cut models from various manufacturers–everything from very simple widgets to fully functional and surprisingly accurate pendulum wall clocks. The models from ROKR are well-conceived and designed. They are also fun to build if you have some experience. The kits contain many (many!) small parts and the instructions are sometimes vague. But with careful attention, the process can be quite satisfying. The final projects themselves often end up in a closet or on a high shelf because the journey of assembly is more satisfying than the completed model. Here are my top tips:
1. Read the introduction and symbol guide very carefully. You won’t get any words after the intro, just pictures.
2. Although the models don’t require glue, you’ll be tempted at least on the base of most models. Resist the urge to glue until you have a final working model that has been properly rigged and adjusted.
3. Have good light and a magnifier for looking at the instructions and handling small parts.
4. Take some time to learn the breaking point of the material using scrap from the base construction. Some parts break easily and will slow you down as you repair or re-form the part.
Amazon Customer –
We have 3 of the 4 of these now with the forth on order. The Marble Parkour was our first and it was the easiest to assemble and it worked fine right away. It is great how it chooses between the two paths. The lift coaster was the second one. It is much more difficult to assemble and the lift would not lift high enough to drop off the marble. I had to do three modifications to get it to work. It still is not perfect but it does work now and is fun. The third was the Marble Squad. It went together fairly easily as most of it is the same as the Parkour. One of the supports for a ramp broke when trying to attach the ramp. But I was able to glue it and it holds up fine. This works fine except they have two paths and the marbles never take the second path. It still is fun. We will see how the forth one works as it is similar to the lift coaster.
Nočnica Fee –
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My review is for the “marble squad” version of the kit.
This is a complex kit that works surprisingly well for something with 8 metal pieces and hundred of plywood bits.
The design is very thoughtful and a lot of work went in to designing something that’s difficult build wrong:
* every piece has its pet number etched *on* the part so you can identify it even if you pop it out too early
* all identical pieces have the same part number making it easy to keep parts sorted
* lots of pieces either can’t fit when flipped over, or are symmetrical so it doesn’t matter
* subgroups have little labels etched on them so they’re easy to identify when you need them
* the smallest pieces, the tiny pegs, all have spares included
My few minor tips:
* the laser cut wood can be harder to pop out with your fingers, an exacto knife might be useful here
* the included tool can be used to slip the little plastic fairings on the steel shaft. Otherwise this step is quite difficult!
* use the included wax liberally every step where it’s indicated on the instructions!
*dont worry too much if the gearing doesn’t look perfectly true in the first stages of assembly, the whole thing gets more rigid once it’s completed and the stair stepper particularly feels quite janky until the bottom pieces go in.
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It’s a really lovely kit, I’ll definitely try another ROKR kit in the near future