EWA Eco Wood Art Wooden 3D Puzzle for Adults and Teens - Mechanical Planetarium - Educational Toy - DIY Kit for Self-Assembly, No Glue Required

I have built 50+ of these types of motion models. This one was spendy so it took some time to decide to buy it. This model was very boring to build. Most the parts are about the same so you will be sanding many many gears and teeth for a very long time. Something I do as I drink coffee before work. It has so many parts and is definitely the heaviest model Ive bought. I had to take it apart 3 times and make changes to some of the spacers to get it to work. I had to cut a few pieces off from the lower base and use a little glue instead so the first disk (Neptune) would not rub on the base and get caught. (it was). After all this, it works and looks GREAT. this is a big model and you will need some space to display it. Side note.....this is built with all planets aligned. if you start tuning the knob watch out. You will need to turn this knob for ??? to get them aligned again. For instance, the last time our planets were aligned was in 561 BC and wont be aligned again until 2854! I maybe turning this knob for years before it will align again!

I want to start by saying I would buy additional models from this company, it’s promising. But this one needs several re-designs.The bad: First, the actual gear mechanisms are impossible — I’ve put enough of these kits together to know right from the beginning that this would never actually turn via the tiny crank. It’s too much force focused on a single bottom gear attached to a shaft by two small (and almost immediately broken) contact points. No way it could be expected to send movement up this gigantic model. I waxed the heck out of these gears, but 0 chance. It needs to have a bigger bottom gear and a different type of crank. Basically the whole gear assembly needs a redesign. Maybe one set of gears/crank for the outer planets and another for the inner planets, to divide the tension.The model also needs glue in some places, where things like dowels are held in by uneven friction and fighting gravity...nothing secures them and several fell lose without glue.The wood sheets themselves fall apart easily, with individual pieces coming free during shipping and even more as you flip between sheets for the parts you need. Several of the pieces are close to identical, which means if a piece falls out it’s prob best to lightly write in pencil what the sheet and part number was, because you’ll have a ton of unintentionally free pieces as you go.The good: the model is nice looking, I’ve wanted a wood orrery (I’m pretty sure that’s the proper term) for a while.It was also fairly fun to assemble, plenty of parts and sheets. However, some of the parts are pretty repetitive, so if you don’t like making the same basic type of gear 9-10 time, this isn’t for you.The directions were fine, a little blurry for some small details but better than some other manufacturers. It’s translated from Russian or Ukrainian so it’s not perfect, but nothing about the translation was so bad that it impacted assembly.Good amount of spare parts, I am happy that the company went out of its way on that.Despite the fact that it does not meaningfully function because of the gear issue, it’s still a very nice decorative piece, and that’s why I’m still giving it 4 stars. That might seem high given the problems, but for me, the assembly and decorative properties outweigh the function. I also think it’s an ambitious and promising piece from this company.

This is a total waste of money. My Husband is a retired Engineer/General Contractor, He tried 4 times to put this together and finally gave up. The prior Gentleman was spot on, the design needs to be beefed up, the shaft/support that holds the thing together is too weak to support all the gears. We read the 2 reviews before ordering only to find they are correct. It is possible that their were more reviews but they were not available, we couldn’t access them. No wonder only 5 total reviews, 2 available for the price of this WHY?A total waste of money. Oh I might add, my husband has put together a multitude of wood piece items.