VEX Robotics Pick & Drop Ball Machine by HEXBUG

I am a Middle School STEM Teacher. I bought this product as a fun activity for students to do if they finished other classwork early. It took about 3 hours for my 12-year-old student to complete building. They had minimal trouble with building the model; however, there are some parts in the instructions that ask for something to be built twice and some parts that do not need to be built twice. My student got a little confused and ended up building something accidentally twice as it wasn't clear to him that he only needed one for that part. Mechanically, the model works well and is quite fun to turn the crank to. I have several of VEX's ball machines on a table and this one always has the most students gathered around it trying it out. Pros: + Instructions are in English (not translated from Chinese) + Visual, detailed instructions + Easy to fix mistakes + Model works as intended Cons: + Lots of small pieces

Incomplete assembly instructions, and a missing part made this build much more difficult than expected. Update. 8 yr old assembled with wrong part choice. Watching a video of a working build enabled the build error. Missing piece was in wrong place, so nothing missing. A few minor rubber band adjustments and it worked great!

No issues.

It took 2 days to finally assemble this and kids had fun to play it . There is only one tiny part that doesn’t work that smoothly but I guess this is more like kids inappropriately assembling . Anyway , I do recommend buying this product .

This kit is very sturdy once assembled and is simple enough for a child to help. It's been in use in my house with young children for several months and is still kicking after being dropped, broken and put back together twice. It's also a great introduction to gear box adjustment when configuring the cycle offsets for the arms.

Bought this for my 8 year old son. It took him all day to complete but was able to do so with only needing my help to clarify a step in the process a couple of times. This is a good starter kit in to the world of STEM. Highly recommend it.

It operates pretty much like it's supposed to. It doesn't always pick up a ball and drop it like it should.

My grandson loves putting things together . He is 10, always putting together and taking things apart. This was a challenge but he loved it .

Great product. My 11 year old daughter loved the challenge of building it and it worked great.

jouet solide

Vex is not as polish as Lego Technic, but my 6 years old still enjoy it, it’s a cool set. Technic is somehow easier, even if it say for 8years old, my son could build it when he was 4. Sadly his set has few parts missing, we made good sure we didn’t lost any parts ourself, and it’s too late to exchange or return. Contacted Vex directly, hope they can replace for free soon

We have numerous Vex robotics and normally we do not have an issue. However this product needs a bit more time on the drawing board and in the instructions. Christmas Day it is opened and then a few hours is spent by my 12 year old putting it together. Machine works fine in picking up the balls but it will not release it. So we begin to troubleshoot it. Some small changes are done as we fine some mistakes but the machine still isn’t working right. She points out the mistakes in the book where we have parts shown in the final product photos but not in the instructions. This is the first 3 photos. We don’t have the green clear plastic on (photo 1) and last page of instructions doesn’t have it (photo 2) but the page in the book showing how to use had them (photo 3) and they are on the other side. We try moving to the other side but they don’t connect (photo 4) or they interfere with the other arms (photo 5). Still won’t work and she walks from it for the time being. Dad now goes over the setup quickly and doesn’t see any major issues. Then the next hour is done going step by step and everything is build as per instructions. But doesn’t work. Try several options and improv changes to try to get it all to work. Video shows the issues with spec build and some improv work. Even using YouTube and online resources the machine won’t work as designed Instructions are missing steps and how pieces are to put onto the machine that are shown on company website. It seems parts have changed slightly from what I saw online from what I have (small mods) but cannot get machine to open the claws enough to drop the balls. Glad from amazon as this one is going back.