MakerKit → MakerKit Pro

10x hardware. A feasible path to robotics.

No CAD. No coding. The mechanism still moves. Snap the structure together, drag in a motor, describe the motion in a sentence — and watch it run in your browser. Build the same thing on your desk, and the same path carries on to metal parts and a real machine.

Diagram: two meshing gears driving a rack, turning rotation into straight-line travel

Schematic · rotation in, straight-line travel out

Live browser platform · 300+ simulated mechanisms · Real machines built

The problem

Software breaks in one place. Hardware breaks in nine.

Every machine passes through three stages — idea, prototype, product — and each stage demands three different skill sets: 3D design, electronics, software.

That is nine cells. Any one of them blocked stops the project, because you cannot ship eight-ninths of a robot.

They are also coupled. In software, one changed line affects one line. In hardware, one moved hole restarts all three tracks: the motor no longer fits, so the current changes, so the board changes, so the code changes, so you print the part again — and the hole moves again.

So nobody fills nine cells alone. You assemble a team, and the cost of merely starting is an order of magnitude higher than software. Meanwhile the tool that is supposed to help takes years to master, and what moved on screen still fails on the bench. Demand for smart hardware keeps climbing; the number of people who can actually build it does not.

The nine cells of hardware development
3D design Electronics Software
Idea If you cannot draw it, you cannot discuss it No idea how many motors, or what rating No idea whether the logic is feasible
Prototype Model, print, assemble, rework Select, wire, debug, fry a board Firmware, comms, tuning
Product Tolerances, tooling, batch consistency Boards, certification, supply chain Updates, stability, production

3 stages × 3 skill sets — the n⁹ hurdle

The platform

Assemble. Attach. Describe the motion.

Nine cells collapse into one act, and you do the whole thing in a browser tab.

C₁ · Construct

Snap the structure together

Build a mechanism the way you would build with bricks. The connection carries the constraint: assemble it wrong and it does not fit; assemble it right and it actually moves. You never open CAD.

C₂ · Cube

Drag in what moves and senses

Blocks that turn electricity into motion — motors, servos — and blocks that turn the world into numbers: distance, attitude, sound, vision. Drag one in and it works. No part selection, no wiring, no datasheets.

C₃ · Code

Say what it should do

Describe the behaviour in a sentence and the logic appears as blocks you can drag and adjust. It runs. You get readable code you can keep, and you never had to learn a language to get it.

It moves on screen because it is moving under real physical constraints — not because someone animated it. And every part in the model is a part in your hand, one to one. When the simulation passes, you just build it.

Try it

Try it in your browser. Nothing to install.

No account, no download, no CAD. About ninety seconds.

  1. Open a mechanism and turn it over in 3D.
  2. Drag a motor onto it and run it.
  3. Change one thing — a ratio, a speed, where the motor sits — and watch the result change with it.

Nothing here is pre-rendered. You are driving it.

Schematic of the workspace — open the real one above

Proof

This already exists. Go and check.

A library of 300+ mechanisms, and they all move

Not drawings — every one of them has run in simulation and is there to view in 3D. More than twenty mechanism families, each one the thing you already know from a real machine: the differential in a car, the worm drive in powered blinds, the four-bar linkage in an excavator boom. Ask for a mechanism that turns rotation into straight-line travel and you get working candidates back, instead of a catalogue to browse.

A complete brick robot arm

Serial joints, an end-effector with orientation, repeatable motion. The structure was snapped together, the motor was dragged in, the motion was spoken. Someone who cannot use CAD and cannot code is holding a machine that moves — which is the only test that matters for whether the three C's are complete.

Real machines, on the floor

Mechanisms from the library exist in physical form and have been built and photographed — gears, linkages, cams, differentials, tracks. Past bricks, the same method runs on metal: a quadruped that walks, with a gait that was trained rather than hand-written, running on the machine itself.

Spur gears
Belt drive
Worm drive
Cam
Rack & pinion
Linkage

Diagrams — the library shows every one of these actually moving

MakerKit Pro

MakerKit gets it moving. MakerKit Pro makes it hold up.

The method does not change. The parts change — and a fourth layer appears that no screen can settle for you.

MakerKit MakerKit Pro What changes
C₁ Construct Plastic bricks on a standard grid Metal and 3D-printed structural parts The constraints are identical; the parts can now take the load
C₂ Cube Toy motors and sensor modules Torque-controlled actuators, with encoders and inertial sensing Same interfaces, higher range and precision
C₃ Code Visual logic blocks The same logic, plus motion that can be trained instead of scripted You still just give it a motion
C₄ Calibrate Not needed on screen A machine that holds up on the ground, commissioned on your hardware with our engineers alongside yours The layer only the real machine can settle

A machine that passes in simulation is not yet a machine that stands up. Somewhere it has to touch the world — a foot against the ground, a fingertip against an object, a rotor against the air — and what happens at that contact is not something a screen can tell you.

That is what Pro is. What you get back is not tougher parts; it is a calibrated parameter set that already runs on the machine.

Quadruped
Robot arm
Dexterous hand
Heavy-lift drone

One framework — the quantities that go into it differ

Who it's for

Three people arrive here, and they need different things.

Educators and makers

A class, a workshop or a weekend goes from an idea to a machine that moves — without a lab, a machine shop, or an engineer on staff. Students finish holding something they designed, not something that came in a box.

Open the live demo →

R&D and product teams

Settle whether the mechanism works before anyone cuts metal. Then carry the same design forward — real actuators, real structure, a machine calibrated on your own floor — instead of throwing it away and starting again.

Talk to us →

OEMs, integrators and labs

Take the modules on their own and put them in a machine of your own design. No whole-machine minimum, and they are built to work inside hardware that is not ours — the protocol and SDK are open.

See what we supply →

What we supply

Take a module, a machine, or the whole capability.

Whole machines are expensive to ship and slow to deliver. Broken down, every layer stands on its own.

Component supply

Joint actuators — motor, reduction and encoder as one unit. Driver boards with firmware, protocol and SDK. Structural parts in metal, printed or brick. Sold individually, no whole-machine minimum, and shipped with calibration parameters: bolt it on and it works, including inside somebody else's machine.

Request a quote →

Custom robotics

Quadruped, robot arm, dexterous hand, heavy-lift drone. Same kit, different topology: one actuator module becomes a quadruped, a biped or a wheeled base, and what changes is link length and joint order. You are not paying anyone to start from zero.

Tell us the scenario →

Offshore engineering

The platform, the calibration work, and the actuators and drives — delivered as a whole to your site, with our engineers working alongside your team. For customers who need production in a particular country, or who want the capability resident rather than rented.

Talk about deployment →

Why this can ship anywhere

Because none of it depends on any one country's supply chain.

01

Ordinary parts

Motors, bearings, screws — orderable online, from more than one place, with nothing sitting on a long lead time.

02

Printable structure

A desktop printer makes the parts. No machine shop and no tooling to fund, so a line can stand up somewhere it otherwise could not.

03

Transmittable drawings

The design travels as files, not containers. Send them and it is made locally, close to your customers — the United States included.

Landed cost is transparent: tell us the country and we will work it out with you before you commit.

About

We build the path from bricks to real machines.

MakerKit started from one observation: hardware stays in the hands of a few, not because good ideas are rare, but because nine separate things have to go right before anybody sees the first motion.

So we built the part that removes the wait — a browser platform where a mechanism is assembled, driven and given behaviour, and a library of mechanisms that all genuinely move. On the desk, those same mechanisms exist in bricks. Past the desk, the same method runs on metal structure and torque-controlled joints, on machines that have to survive a real floor. Only the parts get tougher; the method is the one you already learned.

We supply modules, build machines for a scenario, and deploy the whole capability to a customer's site. If there is a mechanism you are stuck on, send it to us — we will show it moving.

Questions

The five things people ask first.

Is this a toy or a development tool?
Both tiers exist on purpose. MakerKit is bricks and a browser, and it is genuinely enough to finish a working robot arm. MakerKit Pro is metal structure, printed parts and torque-controlled actuators, for machines that carry load. It is one road with a fork, not two products.
Do I need CAD or programming experience?
No — that is the point. You assemble the mechanism, drag in the parts that move and sense, and describe the motion in a sentence. If you do write code, you can take readable code away with you; you just do not have to learn a language to get a machine moving.
What exactly is the difference between MakerKit and MakerKit Pro?
MakerKit proves the machine on screen and you build it by hand. Pro makes that machine hold up on the ground: tougher parts, torque-controlled actuators, and commissioning on your own hardware with our engineers alongside yours until it performs.
Can you supply just one actuator, or just a driver board?
Yes. Modules are sold individually with no whole-machine minimum order, and they are meant to work inside machines that are not ours — the protocol and SDK are open. They ship with calibration parameters, so you are not running a trial of your own to find out how the part behaves.
Can this be produced in my country?
Yes. The parts are ordinary and orderable, the structure comes off a desktop printer, and the design travels as files rather than containers — so production can stand up close to you, the United States included. Tell us the country and we will work out the landed cost with you.

Contact

Tell us what you're building.

Two things happen on this page: people try the platform, and people ask us to build something. Either is a good first message. Send us the mechanism you are stuck on and we will show it moving.

contact@makerkit.com

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