Pathfinders STEM Kit – Hydraulic Robotic Arm | Wooden Building Kit for Kids Ages 8-12 | Mechanical Engineering Toy | Hands-On STEM Project for Boys & Girls

I built this with my 8 year old son and was very impressed. My son is interested in engineering and robotics so we have done many building projects together. Of all of them this had to be the easiest to follow. Great easy to follow instructions and kept his interest during the entire process. A great educational gift

I received this item within just 3-4 days of placing my order. My initial observations: Product came well-packaged to prevent damage. The materials look to be of a high quality ( 3-layer, 1/8" hobby "plywood") and are well cut. A large and heavy 3/8" MDF base should do well to secure and effectively stabilize the robotic arm once assembled. The 12 page directions are well-illustrated and look very complete, and neatly laid out. Both text and illustrations are crisp, though font/type is a little small for 8-12 year-olds. There are inspirational comments (e.g. "Nice!", "Looks great!" or "You rule!") in the English-accurate directions (likely written by a native speaker) which keep kids moving through the construction process, and great visuals with arrows indicating precise locations of key parts and their placement (a "drop" of glue is drawn and its precise location given). There is even a page that discusses hydraulics and compares it to the use of air pressure in the syringes and Tygon tubing instead. As a middle school engineering teacher and former Education Coordinator at Tufts University's Wright Center for Innovative Science Education, Pathfinders' Derek Wulff is to be commended for an affordable, well-designed STEM project very suitable for the 8-14 year old age group.

It was a great project with my son. I was surprised (and delighted) that it was as complex as it was. Be prepared to work on it for a few days. It's nice that he gets to see a pneumatic reaction from pushing and pulling the syringes rather than just an electronic arm. My only complaint was that it is way too easy to pull the syringes out too far and get colored water everywhere. Some sort of stopper would have been great. Otherwise a fantastic learning toy.

It was fun to build, very impressed with the accuracy of the parts and their fit. Sadly, five minutes into building it, while just picking up empty pill bottles, one of the grabber arms broke nearly in two at the pivot joint. Looking at the break, it's pretty obvious its a design flaw, as there is very little wood to each side of the pivot hole, and would be naturally fragile at that point. It's an easy re-design, hopefully Pathfinders will update their design to beef up that failure point. Fun right up until the point it broke 5 minutes into using it. That's why what would be 5 stars is down to 2.

I built this with my four year old, and it was very difficult for him to get into that part. He watched and helped where he could though. The finished product is very awesome. The robot rotates about 90 degrees, raises, and lowers, and has a huge claw that opens and closes. There is no up/down articulation in the claw, which would make this thing just about perfect. My kit had only 5 of the 6 syringes, so I emailed the company, which appears to be one guy in Canada, and he promptly sent us two extra syringes. My kids (2 and 4) both love it. It's a very cool learning toy.

Sadly enough this item was missing pieces right out of the box, so my son was never able to fully put it together.

Kit goes together without any issues, its very satisfying to use the arm. Depending on the age of your kids, I'd forgo the food coloring as inevitably you'll spring a leak.

I built this with my 9 year old. We saw something similar at a science demonstration and thought it would be neat to build. The directions for the kit were easy to follow. We worked on it together over 2 days and it went together with no problems. My son took the wooden arm to school and showed it off to his class. This was a good introductory lesson on robotics and hydraulics.