KiwiCo Tinker Crate – Crane & Pulley | Review

It’s been another month, so we’ve now received and completed our third KiwiCo Tinker Crate. Following on from the Spin Art Machine and Walking Robot boxes was a Crane and Crank machine to build, and an accompanying booklet titled Pulley Power. As with the previous two, there’s always a scientific element to these, and this one is grounded in the transferal of energy and physics.

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The previous robot experiment had been all about transferring movement along pieces to create a moving machine, and the Spin Art before had also used battery power, albeit to spin a component that you dropped ink onto. The Pulley Power (Crane and Pulley) box is the first one that we’ve had that didn’t come with an electronic component, and at the same time, it was probably the most complex and compelling one thus far.

It all starts with you sticking precision-cut foam onto the same-sized pieces of wood, then sliding them all together. Within a handful of steps, the frame of the wooden crane is in place and you’ve fitted it onto the box for anchoring. After that, there are sliding plastic parts, which include receivers and pulleys, the receivers being the parts that you later attach string to. That string serves as the cabling that controls the arms of the crane, with one side moving the lower limb and the other the upper limb. Then you assemble the arms, once again using plastic components, although this time ones shaped so the string can be guided by it. There are certainly a few more plastic components in it than before, however – as ever – there’s practically zero waste.

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The crane itself is quite strong too, and once it’s built and working there are tonnes of different activities in the Tinker Zine that comes with it. The Zine is really, really fantastic, and is definitely an under-celebrated part of the subscription. I actually think that they should try to print the instructions for assembly inside it, to promote people to carry on with the experiments afterwards. As it currently stands the box contains a fold-out ‘schematic’-style guide to assembling whatever the activity is, which draws away from the compact magazine.

That magazine, for reference, gives an introduction to pulleys, tells you how to make two different types of pulleys and explains the history of pulleys. After that it discusses different crane configurations for the core activity, has an experiment sheet and explains mechanical advantage, among other things.

Both Kai and I are really excited about what’s going to be in the next box from KiwiCo; We know that there are Cannonball launchers, INfinity Mirrors and more in some of the boxes, but we’ll have to wait and see!

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