At xmas, we bought our oldest grandson a huge technical Meccano kit. The thinking behind it was that as his dad has no practical skills whatsoever, it may encourage him a little, and also teach him design, how to read plans an d apply them to the job in hand, teach some manual dexterity and a few other things. Eight months on, and only two pieces had been fastened together, and they were wrong (his dad).
Last night he was staying over and I said I would build it with him (motorised sports car) to get him started. Well to say it was a nightmare would be an understatement. The plans are so vague its ridiculous, so many washers, rings, donuts and pieces that were almost identical in size and colour, all depicted black on the plans made the job extremely difficult to start with. Almost every bolt had to be measured to get the right one as the plans for these were the same. Six hours into this, we finally fitted the engine, and checking it against the plan it was perfect. The following page of the plans showed the same position as we were at with the engine mounted the other way up. Sound like an obvious decision but trust me, it wasnt. At this point none of it resembled a car anyway so there was simply no reference. I got it right and pushed on. It took 13 hours in total to get to the last part, the gearing. We needed two identical gear cogs to finish the job, and guess what, there was only one in the box. Grandson had given up hours before and gone to bed.
What used to be an exceptional education toy for children is now hopeless in design. No child could have built that car alone as following the plans, I very often had to go back two steps and do it my way. All this box of junk would do is put a boy off engineering for life. Its Scalextric today.
Last night he was staying over and I said I would build it with him (motorised sports car) to get him started. Well to say it was a nightmare would be an understatement. The plans are so vague its ridiculous, so many washers, rings, donuts and pieces that were almost identical in size and colour, all depicted black on the plans made the job extremely difficult to start with. Almost every bolt had to be measured to get the right one as the plans for these were the same. Six hours into this, we finally fitted the engine, and checking it against the plan it was perfect. The following page of the plans showed the same position as we were at with the engine mounted the other way up. Sound like an obvious decision but trust me, it wasnt. At this point none of it resembled a car anyway so there was simply no reference. I got it right and pushed on. It took 13 hours in total to get to the last part, the gearing. We needed two identical gear cogs to finish the job, and guess what, there was only one in the box. Grandson had given up hours before and gone to bed.
What used to be an exceptional education toy for children is now hopeless in design. No child could have built that car alone as following the plans, I very often had to go back two steps and do it my way. All this box of junk would do is put a boy off engineering for life. Its Scalextric today.
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