VEX Robotics Screw Lift Ball Machine by HEXBUG

The VEX Screw Lift Ball Machine is another fine educational toy that teaches physics. It employs Archimedes’ Screw to lift the balls to the top of the machine and the roll back down to hopper to start the experience all over again.The VEX parts and pieces can be interchanged with the VEX IQ system. This makes these great toys infinitely expandable. Multiple ball machines can be chained together, motors can be added, and if you add the VEX IQ Robotics kit to the mix you can even build a color sorter.All the pieces were designed with the idea to be connected thee-dimensionally. This is completely different than LEGO as LEGO is only a two-dimension brick.The parts are well constructed. The system takes some time to figure out how to put pieces together and take apart again. The pins can be difficult sometimes for little fingers to remove from parts. The instructions provide some very clear illustrations on how to remove stubborn pieces from each other. Also the directions require close attention when assembling. They do their best to call out when to pay close attention to part orientation, which part is needed, and how it actually supposed to fit together.

It was a nice challenge to put this screw lift together. It took concentration, but the pictures provided in the assembly guide were very detailed and helpful. I bought this to demonstrate the principle of the Archimedes screw to my students at school. Everyone enjoyed playing with it. In that setting, I did have to monitor its use so they wouldn’t break it. As it is, they did manage to get something off kilter, but it still works absolutely fine. As a personal toy, I don’t think there would be much danger of breaking it. In all, I think this is a fantastic science toy. I would be interested in purchasing other items of this kind from the manufacturer.

So much fun to build. I wish they had stuff like this when my kids were young. Quite a few extra pieces that had me worried but it works perfectly. I like puzzles and I sometimes build with Legos, so I did not find the instructions to be difficult to understand. It is very relaxing to turn the crank and watch the balls, Building was more fun than jigsaw puzzles and as rewarding as knitting.

builds mechanical and engineering skills

HEXBUG VEX Robotics Screw Lift Ball Machine is a very nicely designed Educational Toy.The Instructions are written with Kids in mind: it's very easy to follow them, and that makes building this Ball Machine a real pleasure for kids. I expect next step will be modified Ball Machine with the Motor turning the screw.

I had one of my (13 year-old) beginning robotics students build this as a reward for finishing normal classwork early. It took them 2 hours to build on their own with no prior experience with working with VEX parts. They said the instructions were a little difficult to follow and not very clear.The assembled product is okay; however, there's a spot where the balls ALWAYS fall out of the machine when turning the crank. It's not very well designed in that aspect. We tried coming up with solutions to solve the problem in the least intrusive and least material heavy way as my class has other vex parts that could be used to fix the problem... although we shouldn't have to do this in the first place.Overall, it's a good tool to teach about simple machines which is why I purchased this in the first place... there's quite a few of them built into the mechanism.

Gift for my 10 year old son who loves building things. He really liked this model. Works well and have had no problems with the machine running. He didn't have any problems putting this together and enjoyed the process.

If they are anything like the other hexbug vex the kids think they are fun to put together