Naoko Ohshiro from Canada wanted to give something to his son to stimulate the engineering skills. What better way to do so than with a Great Ball Contraption! He got our GBC 47 Mill Madness and his son had a blast with it re-using his LEGO 42114 6x6 Volvo Articulated Hauler set. To top it off they also made a video of the machine in action and send it to us. Thank you for sharing this with us!
Here is his review which can also be found on the product page:
Quite a big and exciting project for my child. Time flew as they were having fun. They didn’t ask adults for help except for things like”hey, please pass that axle to me.” I especially like that the instruction starts with the windmill module, followed by a ramp, then the next module, so that even a my younger child hasn’t gotten tired and enjoyed building step by step. Here is my video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SOd3C3rYtY I love that Mill Madness repeatedly gives fantastic opportunities to look at mechanics, investigate, estimate, adjust to fix, and go forward. It also told children the importance of preparation and following steps one by one, and it was also a good starter for my child to visual coding with powered up app. The biggest challenge was to adjust the triple cardan gear lift module. They found the gears got lost gear sync by time, and a 2nd or 3rd cardan gear lift will not be ready at the optimal point even though everything was perfectly synchronized at the first. We have not figured solutions out yet. Instead, we discovered another fun alternative. We built it in the early of January. There was ongoing walking mycoplasma around our neighborhood, and the school said anyone with any symptoms must stay home, even though it was a clear runny nose or a slight cough due to allergy. Due to this, my child and many friends had an extra period of winter break. My child was not sick actually, was happy, and had excess stamina, so Mill Madness was a really great solution while they had to stay home. I am hoping to bring a GBC project to school some day. My child commented, “Liked Most”, “Biggest one so far” and “Will get beaten by GBC 19, Log Flume”. They want to build another large GBC from PV-Productions. I do not have its instructions yet, but I will buy the instructions soon.