We’ve done our best to make the prototype kit reliable, but bugs can happen — this page has suggestions for how to fix the most common issues. You can also email us at support@whomtech.tech for assistance.
roons not behaving properly
- Make sure the drive is on a flat, level surface. If your table/desk isn’t perfectly flat, a rigid clipboard or hardback book works well — prop up the corners with folded paper. You can test it with a spirit level, or by dropping a marble and seeing if it rolls.
- Slow down your encabulator. There’s no minimum speed. roons are designed with the approximation that marbles are always in equilibrium, moving infinitesimally slowly. This approximation holds well for slow speeds (2-3 seconds per turn), but breaks down if the marbles start “lagging” relative to the bar position.
- Turn the encabulation handle smoothly — no sudden jumps. If you’re finding it tricky, try this: keep your finger rigid, and move your entire arm in small circles.
- Try a replacement roon of the same type from your box — we’re manually assembling hundreds of these, so a bad one may have slipped through.
- If it’s a handed roon like a turn
, try the same piece with opposite handedness. - Swap out the bar the roon is sitting on, or try moving it to a different support. It’s possible that the bar or support is angled or malformed.
- Swap out the
— there might be tiny clumps of paint, or cracks in the paint, that affect its movement
Ultimately, if you can’t get a roon to work (please let us know — this shouldn’t happen), you might still be able to work around it. For example, if you’re having trouble with an xor 
, you can substitute in a turn followed by a switch 
.
gears grinding
The gears should turn easily with a minimal amount of grinding (though some is expected in the prototype, due to the limitations of 3D printing). If your drive gears are difficult to move, try this:
- Remove the drive’s sheath. This is the cover with holes for the 8 bar supports. Pull it up firmly and set it aside.
- Test your gears. If they move easily, then the problem is with the sheath — there’s probably a burr or snag catching the bar supports. You’ll need to remove these with a craft knife or sandpaper. Try threading the bar supports through each hole in the sheath to help identify the place it’s catching.
- If it’s not the sheath, try removing the bar supports themselves. These come in 2 interlaced groups of 4 bars. Rotate the gears until one set of bars is maximally raised, then lift both sets of bars up and out of the gears.
- You should now just have the 2×2 grid of gears. Check if they turn smoothly. If they do, something is wrong with the interface between the gear and the bar supports. Again, see if you can find a burr or defect, which will need to be sanded down or removed with a craft knife.
- If the gears are still hard to turn, there’s most likely some gunk inside the bearings and need to be cleaned. We find the best process is to immerse them in isopropyl alcohol and rotate the gears at high speed to clean them out; leave the drive to dry off for a few hours; then apply a fidget spinner lubricant and run them at high speed. Warning: isopropyl alcohol can be dangerous. Wear gloves, do it outside or in a well-ventilated space, and follow the instructions on the bottle.
- You can also try an isopropyl alcohol spray, though we don’t think this is as effective. You can also try any of the standard strategies used for lubricating fidget spinners, skateboards, etc.
- Don’t use WD-40! This will temporarily solve the problem, and then make it much worse.
Again, we don’t expect you’ll have to do any of this unless the box got seriously smashed up.