Hydrobot Arm Kit

With some engineering background, we put it together successfully right away. It took several hours to assemble and I will admit, getting the hydraulics loaded correctly is a bit of a challenge for any 12-year-old without adult supervision. Even then, I could see a lot of folks being overwhelmed by the challenge of not only assembly, piece by piece, with no room for error, to the water-loading hydraulic portion of the assembly. Set aside plenty of uninterrupted time, "roughly" first 40 pages are robot assembly, second 40 pages are hydraulics/pumps/tubing. If you're looking to get your kids interested in robotics, STEM/STEAM, or engineering/manufacturing this is a relatively inexpensive introduction to test the staying power of this low-level technology and their interest. It will also test your patience. Although we've played with it enough now that it's already showing signs of wear and the parts/levers are getting loose. Overall, great introductory toy to robotics!

This kit went to my 13 year old grandson in another state. He's a smart kid and leans toward science. He was excited to get it and a few days later he sent the video. Great summer project he had fun putting together, as well as a learning experience about hydraulics.

Start to finish assembly took right at 8 hours, spread over 3 days. I am a moderately skilled senior citizen. This is no trivial assembly. The good news is that the instructions are very clear, and the parts generally fit together well. However, assembly requires *close attention* to the images/directions, which can wear you down if you try to do it in one sitting. I am tracking my hours to see how long the whole assembly takes, and will share those later. Some hints: 1. DON'T throw away the little envelope that says "don't eat this". I thought it was some kind of dessicant but it is oil essential to project. 2. You will need a *small* phillips screwdriver, with bit fits screw heads well, because some are tight. Lots of pressure and slow turning of screwdriver was necessary for many of the screws. 3. Put a new blade in your utility knife to trim off the innumerable tabs. Update - carefully cut items from matrix with knife to avoid separate removal of tabs 4. Be methodical, and careful with the **small** parts (and tiny screws). Put items in ziplok bags & containers as you go. No spare screws or springs are provided so DON'T LOSE any. (I'd have paid the extra $0.20 or whatever) 5. Filling the pneumatic system components with water was the most nerve-wracking - mainly because of the difficulty of eliminating water bubbles. I suggest getting a large container for water, big enough to submerge your hand and enable you to hold items upside down when filling. Move plungers multiple times to eliminate air from cylinders. 6. The filling instructions were a little confusing to me, but basically they want you to fill the cylinders BEFORE attaching hoses. They don't tell you explicitly but I think their procedure is designer to minimize bubbles in tubes that you fill with water. 7. Hoses are very slippery when wet and hard to push on all the way, but a BIG help was using a high-tech "wicking" sweat rag - the artificial fiber gave a good grip on tiny pipe. Also good for mopping up spills. 8. I tried to fill the little hoses by gravity flow before connecting to cylinders, rather than when they were dry. Little bubbles tend to form in dry pipe when first wetted. Maybe it helped a little. Oh, and yes, trying to correct big bubbles later, after complete assembly would be a nightmare - so do your best while filling initially. 9. Installing the levers and cylinders in the base unit is easiest to do from the bottom, rather than from top as they show. I was sure I was going to crack the plastic several times when pushing cylinder assembly ( the enc with spring) to lock under/into control lever. It is very tight but never broke. 10. The unit worked OK when finished - it won't replace a robot arm in a GM factory, but it is simple to use and will hopefully be entertaining to 4 year olds. Time will tell if it is durable enough for that age user.

My 9 y/o son who has a robotics fascination needed to understand the principles of hydraulic actuation before we got into pumps, valves and accumulators. This was the perfect starter kit. A word of warning—this is not really a kit for novices. The systems won’t work really well unless you are diligent in following the instructions to bleed each of the cylinders and water lines. It’s a lot of tedious assembly work for a younger kid that should be overseen by someone with at least a little mechanical aptitude. But for the price it is a fantastic teaching tool and precision toy.

We got this as a Christmas gift for my engineering-minded kid. He LOVED putting it together and how intricate it was. Actually cutting the tubes and putting water in it to make it work was pretty cool. Highly recommend!

The only downside is the black and white instructions, other than that it is clear how much attention to detail and meaningful iteration went into this.

This thing is pretty sweet. Saw it on sale so couldn't pass it up. My son and I put it together and he has played with it for hours.

My son and I tag-teamed and assembled it in an afternoon, though it requires patience and a steady hand to clip the burs off all the plastic parts. What’s great is that you can tell whoever designed this knew what they were doing and didn’t cut any corners (like a lot of cheap science sets). It’s sturdy and the hydraulics work really well. There’s an hydraulic GLOVE kit that I recommend getting first, then follow up with this for a perfect combo.

Buen reto para un niño de 10 años, se entretuvo bastante. Buena movilidad.

Muy bueno, le encantó a mi hijo, se divierte jugándolo. Recomendado

Está muy padre, lo que los niños aprenden es mucho. Lo que no me gustó fue que es algo delicado para que un niño lo arme. Las piezas se rompen con facilidad

Es hermoso, no es tan complicado como decian las reseñas. Esta muy padre!

Es un excelente producto