Tinker Crate Review & Coupon – Biomechanical Hand

Tinker Crate is a subscription box that inspires kids to explore and learn about science, engineering, and technology, plus have tons of fun. Every month, you’ll get a new crate to help kids develop a tinkering mindset and creative problem solving skills. It is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focused and designed to help kids build their problem solving skills and to gain the confidence and curiosity to tackle problems where there’s no one right answer. 

This was everything that arrived in our October 2015 Tinker Crate – the supplies, a fold-out instruction sheet, and the Tinker Zine.  This box had a major project and several mini projects using a similar technical approach.

This month’s big project was a mechanical hand!  The configuration makes it impractical for gripping or manipulating objects, but the fingers do flex when the individual strings are pulled — as shown in the picture, each digit can be controlled by a corresponding finger on your real hand.  We also remedied the “broken thumb” issue apparent in the photo with a simple fix (see final photos of hand, below, for the explanation).

Along with materials and instructions, you get some handy pointers and a troubleshooting guide.  The sheet tells you everything that came in the box, some tips, and help if you can’t get it to work.

The instructions are clear and easy to follow and include both visuals and text, with lots of tips and checkpoints to test whether you’ve assembled your hand correctly.  The instructions look busy and complicated, but the opposite is true — the high level of specificity and detail makes it hard to take a wrong turn without realizing it quickly and setting it right.  They are great instructions for the target age, because they don’t assume that you know too much about the mechanics of the project (which would leave you guessing if you lacked the requisite knowledge).

I don’t know if I can stress enough how integral the zine is to this box!

The Tinker Zine this month was all about hands — both the mechanical kind and the real deal they emulate.  

For reference, our daughter is almost 7 – a bit under the recommended age of this box, but she loves it.  If you have a precocious and super-interested child, don’t hesitate to try it out (although they may need a bit more help!).

Our daughter reads the magazine cover to cover and we find that she has great retention of the information. The style is conversational while still being 100% accurate. There’s all sorts of goodies in here – read the whole thing!  This edition had a whole set of secondary projects to complement the main build, the materials for which were included in the crate!

There’s fun and engaging text, plus try this out activities.  My daughter read me the entire article on digitization and 3D printing as a means of making complex artificial hands both scalable and available at little cost to people across the globe.

This project looks very complex and models a solution to a very complex real-world problem, but the Tinker project was well enough thought out that it was an attainable challenge for our six year old.  We give TinkerCrate a thumbs up!

The project is great on many levels — it teaches kids to think like an engineer, to appreciate challenges of people with physical disabilities (as well as shining a spotlight on the altruistic efforts of some creative folk to “lend a hand” in alleviating such challenges), and it helps develop fine motor skills.

The project took a while to completed (which is a great thing).  The pre-drilled lead made inserting the screws very easy.

It works!

The kit included extra eye hooks, so we included one at the base of the thumb.  This modification redirected force so that pulling on all the strings in the same direction put pressure down the shaft of the thumb rather than across it.

The various side projects in the Zine relied on similar mechanics.  There was a snail.

And a ship-attacking octopus.

And a bumblebee.

Diamond-shaped snips in the shaft of the straws, and the string threaded within, make the different assemblies function similar to the hand, contracting with a tug of the string.

The completed hand, palm side.

Back of the hand.

We really love Tinker Crate — the protest are fascinating and extremely well thought through.  The STEM focus is much appreciated, and the Zine and the project choice itself do a great job of making the projects really fun!

Visit Tinker Crate to subscribe or find out more!  Use code MS30 to save 30% on your first box!  (or Kiwi Crate  and the KiwiCo family subscriptions Koala Crate and Doodle Crate).