Automatic Chain Lift Marble Run Accessory Set

Great pulleys and motors. Take your time and remove links as needed so that the pulleys and chains are set up straight. There is a perfect number to use and instructions don't help on that. Just keep adding or removing links to get it right. You can very easily daisy chain these and go up as high as you need to. The video shows doing this with two of them. I would need to buy another extreme marble set to go higher probably as you run out of the small pieces. When daisy chained they can get you about 4 feet off the floor.

The addition of the lift and some of the other add-ons to the basic marble run kept not only the 6-year-olds but a number of grown-ups happy for hours after Christmas. The video showing how to assemble it is easy to follow. The only problem was that just occasionally a marble would get stuck as it came off the lift. The whole contraption makes an amazing toy: strongly recommended.

So, I have slowly amassed a large collection of Marble Genius (and other compatible sets) pieces. When I saw this for only $10, I bought 3. The attached video only shows ONE of the products being used so you know how much comes in a normal purchase and I just assembled as a very basic tower. The Good: + The motors are relatively quiet. + It works 95% of the time. + It allow for continuous rotation of the the marbles + The chain length is adjustable! (and it comes with 3 more links than what is needed to reach the top. (in the video, there are 3 links I left out or it would have too much slack). + The price! $10 for a motorized lift to the top? Buy Now. The Bad: - Doesn't come with nearly enough of the little marble catchers. - Since there's tension that pulls the top piece a little bit off level/flat, it can cause the marbles to not roll out at the top and when another marbles is dropped off, it will jam and the whole chain stops moving. I wish the top piece had a much steeper drop to get those marbles moving out of the way and not stuck if the top isn't perfectly flat. - It's very finicky when it comes to marble sizes that work. If you use official Marble Genius marbles, you'll be fine. But I have a bunch of other marbles from various sources and if they are a little too big or small, they will jam at the top or fall out at the bottom. - The bottom loading section can get backlogged and a marble will end up on top of another marble and as one is lifted up, the other will fall out of the machine. So, my title says to buy 3, and the reason is you can form one long chain 6 ft tall if you wanted. I haven't tried that yet, so I'm not sure if the motor will be strong enough to move that much chain. But, at $10, you can definitely take the 2-3 sets and make 1-2 much taller lifts. Plus, having all of the extra little marble 'seats' is very valuable. As mentioned above, they don't come with nearly enough. I could put all the little seats from all 3 lifts and put them onto the chain of 1 lift to have it cranking out more and more marbles. When the product arrives, the chain is in a bunch of individual segments that you just snap together. I'd spaced the 'seats' to attach where each of the segments attached to one another and was a little bit surprised when the number of seats didn't match up with the number of segments. As you can see in the video, the seats are still spaced quite a bit and then there's a rather large section (nearly half the chain) where there aren't any! They need to double the number of those little seats, at least! I've since re-arranged them but I thought it was helpful to give an idea of just how few of those little seats there are. The motor can definitely manage with a bunch more seats and marbles going up the lift (since I've put all 3 lift's seats onto one chain -- not shown in video). If interested, the light-up piece that makes noise is sold here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FXWD6FX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Worth every penny

First, let me mention that some reviewers may have assembled this wrong, thus posting frustration. The chain lift should be tight around the gears, without even a tiny bit of slack. I have exactly two sets of 11 of those pipe pieces from bottom boarding station (green) to the top of the exit station (white), PLUS one entrance and exit piece so the total should be 12 pieces per side. What I did: Start with the chain wrapped around both gears, but still open. Now, I lock the two end chains together while it's tightly wrapped around both gears. It feels like the link between both ends of the chain may not meet, but they will with a bit of effort (You may need to add or remove a link to accomplish this). That being said, I've had perfect runs, with a super rare occasion that a marble goes rogue. For $10.00 - color me impressed. The chain is tall enough to get fairly intricate marble run going. I also 3D Printed some extra marble "seats" to add to the chain of 6 that come with the set. Overall, super easy to put together, and another winning add-on for this Genius set

The kids love the chain lift when it's working, but it is hard to get working because the chain has to have sufficient tension, and that is a bit tricky to achieve with the typical plastic marble run pieces. The little plastic tabs that convey the marbles are prone to dropping the marbles if everything is not aligned perfectly. And, the marbles can get stuck at the top of the conveyer if the chain is not completely vertical, again a bit hard to achieve with the plastic marble run pieces and the the tension required on the chain. Overall, fun for everyone, if you set your expectations low and expect this to be used only infrequently, do to the challenges setting it up and keeping it running. Worth the $10 we paid for it.

Adding this product to my son's marble run set (Marble Madness brand) was a gamechanger and he LOVES it. I had to help him put it together, but he helped. (He's 7.) He has played with it non-stop and it has inspired him to try new and different configurations! He's learning and we love it! It feels sturdy. When we put the pieces together, there were a few extra links, making it too long to fit, so we took a few links off so it would fit correctly. Who doesn't like a few extras!?!

The idea of this accessory is great. It’s possible to build fully automated marble runs. In practice thought, this is poorly executed and impossible to build so that it reliably works. The problem is that the chain needs to be extremely tight and the marble run pieces do not have enough torsional rigidity to support the tightly running chain so the structure you build will bend and the marbles will often fall off the carrier, or the other pieces that you connect will be pulled out of plumb. It’s frustrating. In hindsight I wish we hadn’t purchased these (we bought two).

My kids added this to their marble run set and enjoyed making new builds.

Funcional, fácil de armar cuando lo entiendes, requiere algunos ajustes mínimos. Pongan por lo menos el doble de los portacanicas o véndanlos como accesorio opcional, o inclúyanlos en los muchos paquetes de accesorios que tienen, pero hagan algo por favor porque son muy pocos.

Good quality product. Kid like it very much. Great accessory for marble run.

It's a good design.

Es muy bueno. Es complicado de armar para un niño, pero con un poco de ayuda de un adulto queda perfecto.