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!

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.

Very well made small precision parts. The instructions are very clear and well done. Don't plan on finishing this in one sitting.

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.

This hydraulic arm is amazing! The quality is top notch, I’ve never been more satisfied with a “toy” purchase. My son and I spent so many good hours together building this and both of us enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Don’t worry about those posting negative reviews, they simply didn’t build something right or didn’t purge all the air out of the system. If done correctly it moves exactly like it should and works marvelously. My son spent his evening building blocks with it last night and every function works to its full potential. I cannot recommend this high enough. Your child will definitely need help as it’s more complicated than a typical model but the instructions are very clear and easy to follow just be prepared for it to take several nights to build.

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.