Parcours à Billes avec Gradins

See my other review and building and use comments for my number three kit out of four. This one here is my fourth. so on with it. The wood in this kit seemed a bit dry what with it snaping breaking easy. That is the piece being installed.

I'm a 78 YO modeler and technical person.

Lots of gears in this one that can get bound up and lock up. The use of lip balm and graphite particles sure go a long way to lubricating the moving parts. Of courses you need to use a hair dryer to melt the balm so it flows into the wood for fantastic slipping sliding actions.

Super glue in thin and gel versions are critical for tight joints. No drive loose wiggly wood joints for me.

As in the other three I spend time watching the motion, sensing the movement feel of the units and adding pieces to better direct the balls especially in the loading area where all three ball runs come together.

Again a number of kit supplied marbles used for counter weights so only a few to run the game with. Have bough many many more locally and in my tuning process decide what it the optimum number of balls to uses. Too many clogs the works and timing off ball delivery and circulation and too few is useless as it eliminates the fun.

Assembly was straight forward. Assembly instructions were excellent, clearly illustrated and easy to follow.
Model works great.
Overall a great product.

excellent product with hours of fun.
should provide more delicate long and thin parts spares.

I find the tier mechanism on the Marble Run Tiered Hoist is mesmerizing. The kit was great fun to build and runs smoothly. I feared I made a mistake in construction when the first marble got stuck in the three marble accumulator, so you can imagine my delight when the third marble came down the chute. Delightful!

I’m so happy I found UGears. Thank you!

(Part 2)
A problem I have encountered in both models is the weighting of the balls. In the stepped hoist, it was the second split in the track that the ball would roll into the seesaw and rock one way, but the weight of the ball would not cause the seesaw to rock the other way, continuing with the track. Similarly, in this set, the first split in the track has a system where the first two balls that roll down will become stored and the third ball is needed to free them all to continue, but as the last of the 3 balls goes in, it gets stuck on the track before the trigger and does not roll down the track. The marble run is great, but the experience in this set specifically has not been great and I can’t proceed to use the model, let alone with the other one.

(1st part)
The first of the marble sets I received was the stepped hoist. It was great and worked very well. Next I got the tiered hoist and it works a whole lot differently. There are many issues in the structure that some (like I did) will encounter, and issues to do with the weight of the ball (seen in both sets). IT IS IMPORTANT to understand that if any of the connections between components are overworked or overlubricated that they will definitely struggle to connect afterwards, in my case it has resulted in using glue. This may not be ugears fault, but it definitely something they could work on.
There are more loose connections in the hovering components. These may have been caused over the weight of the components pulling down against the vertical connections.

I've already built the Stepped Hoist and it was a blast, so I decided to get this one as well. However, this one turned out to be not as good: first, the obstacles in this one weren't quite as cool and unique, and second, it was less stable in the fact that marbles would keep falling off the track at points like just below the two lifts and getting stuck at the top. I also tried to connect them, but it sadly wouldn't turn and would only work if I turned the cranks in both models together, one in each hand, but that strategy obviously won't work when I add more models to the mix later on. In summary, if you're thinking of only buying one, I'd recommend the Stepped Hoist over this one, and note that the connected setup does NOT work as advertised where one crank turns everything.

Amazing!
Any other (of the 3 connectable models) is compatible with this? or is there any specific order?

Super great it's really fun, complicated yet simple. DEFINITELY would suggest this.
It is also fun to connect different sets together.
Perfect gift for engineering minds.