“Hydrobot Arm Kit”, Hydraulic Kit, STEM Building Toy for Kids 12+

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.

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!

Very cool hydraulic toy, my kid loves it. This definitely requires some parental help for assembly and sometimes the gripper doesn’t work because the extra cylinder in the gripper circuit needs a stronger spring. Also, after a couple weeks, some of the hydraulic lines popped off due to the tubing relaxing and not staying on the cylinders; I had to re-bleed some lines and epoxy the tubes in place. The instructions are clear and thorough. Overall, very cool, and a good value for the price.

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A fun kit. I was totally amazed at the lay out of the peices. The engineering of the kit is astounding... the assembly is is very well layed out, I didn't have too many issues. There is a good online presentation for reference. The fit of the snap together pieces is very accurate. I give this kit very high marks..

My 11 grandson loved it

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.

I like to purchase Christmas gifts for my grandchildren ahead of time. I was really excited about this hydrobot arm kit. Well, it arrived today in its original packaging. In other words, it arrived in the toy box with two labels stuck smack in the middle of it. I was disappointed in the packaging. I was able to remove the labels but they still damaged some of the cardboard. Other than that, it looks like a nice project set, but for the expensive price, it should have been more carefully packaged.