FlexForge Basic
Our add-on pieces, so your students can build anything they design.
- Motor plates, gears, brackets, beams, and screws for your students' robot.
Our add-on kits for grades 3 to 8
FlexForge
FlexForge is our add-on kit for the Pilot Robot Kit and the Axle Robot Kit, available as Basic at $149 or Enhanced at $349. With new pieces, motors, and gears, your students take the robot they already built through our 16 hands-on engineering lessons.
Same robot, same software
Why educators choose FlexForge
We designed FlexForge so your students can solve fresh engineering problems with the robot they built and the software they know, like a delivery claw that carries an object across the room or a snowplow for the front of their robot.
Real-world engineering
Our FlexForge curriculum
Our curriculum team wrote 16 hands-on lessons of 45 to 60 minutes each. After an introduction to what it means to be an engineer, your students work through five units, each one a real-world mission where they explore the problem, build a solution, and test it on the robot they already built.
How every unit works
- The full engineering design process: In every unit, your students explore a real-world mission, build a robot for it, then test it and make it better.
- Real engineering habits: Each mission starts with the problem, the criteria for success, and the constraints, so your students plan before they build.
- An Engineering Journal: Your students sketch, label, and reflect in one journal across every unit, so they can see their own thinking grow.
- A capstone and a showcase: The last unit brings together everything your students built before, and their teams finish by presenting their robot.
Our five units for the Pilot Robot Kit
Grades 3 to 5: a new mechanism in every unit.
- Soccer Bot: Students design a robot that moves a ball into a goal without tipping over.
- Pickup Bot: Students design a mechanism that pinches, lifts, and releases small objects into a bin.
- Plow Bot: Students design a blade that raises, lowers, and angles to clear a path.
- Climber Bot: Students design a spinning arm that helps the robot mount and cross obstacles.
- Capstone robot: Teams pick a real-world theme, agriculture, space exploration, or factory automation, and combine what they built before into one custom robot, then present it in a showcase.
Our five units for the Axle Robot Kit
Grades 6 to 8: every mission has a budget.
- Wildfire Response Bot: Students program Axle to follow a line and deliver water to a fire zone.
- Food Delivery Bot: Students build a secure cargo platform and use the ultrasonic sensor to decide when to wait and when to cross a street.
- Prosthetic Arm: Students build a powered arm and gripper that bends, rotates, grips, and releases an object.
- Ski Bot: Students trade wheels for skis so Axle can cross snow and climb a small ramp.
- Rescue Bot: Teams search the snow with the light sensor, secure a person, and bring them back to base, then present the robot in a showcase.
Two flexible kit options
Our Basic and Enhanced kits both work with the Pilot Robot Kit and the Axle Robot Kit and share the same curriculum, so your school can pick the one that fits your classrooms.
Works with
FlexForge Enhanced
Our larger kit, with more pieces than our Basic kit.
- More plates, gears, and axles for bigger builds.
We price curriculum licensing and professional development separately and bundle them into Classroom Packages at a discount. Prices subject to change. Request a quote for your school.
Where FlexForge fits in your schedule
Used as an extension, FlexForge adds 16 lessons to your Pilot or Axle unit, and our team works with your school's goals to fit everything together into one cohesive unit for your students.
After your base unit, or woven into it
FlexForge does not have to come last. When your school has fewer days than the full unit, our curriculum team can write a custom scope that weaves FlexForge challenges in with the base lessons, so your students still get the whole engineering design process.
In your after-school club
FlexForge works outside the school day too. Your classes can use their built robots in the morning for the regular unit, and in the afternoon your most interested students can use our FlexForge pieces to go deeper into the engineering design process. Once the robots are built, they can go anywhere in your school.
Lessons, software, and training
Where our FlexForge lessons live
Your teachers find every FlexForge lesson in our Curriculum Portal, right beside their Pilot or Axle curriculum. Your students code in True Robotics Playground, which has its own FlexForge Kit tile, and we train your teachers virtually.
Questions about FlexForge
What are the FlexForge add-on kits?
FlexForge is our add-on kit for the True Robotics Pilot Robot Kit and Axle Robot Kit, at $149 per kit for FlexForge Basic and $349 per kit for FlexForge Enhanced. It adds build pieces, extra motors, and gears that your students attach to the robot they built. Our FlexForge curriculum has 16 lessons of 45 to 60 minutes: an introduction, then five units of real-world engineering challenges. Students might design a claw that carries an object across the room or a snowplow for the front of their robot.
Does FlexForge have to come after the regular Pilot or Axle curriculum?
No. We can weave FlexForge right into a True Robotics Pilot or Axle unit, and we plan that mix with your school. For an eighth grade engineering course with about 20 instructional days, our curriculum team wrote a custom scope using Axle with FlexForge. Students spent a couple of days on the build and basic programming. Then they alternated engineering design challenges with sensor programming, because the course's priority was the engineering design process.
Can we run an after-school robotics club?
Yes. Your school can run a True Robotics after-school club with the same robots your classes already use. A class uses the built robots in the morning, and in the afternoon your most interested students can use our FlexForge pieces to go deeper into engineering design. Our General curriculum is a great fit for clubs that mix grades, because it needs no grade-level prior knowledge. Clubs also pair well with staggered units: a grade finishes its unit, then joins the club later in the year.
Built to work with what you already have
FlexForge fits the Pilot and Axle robots your students already build, with the same software and Curriculum Portal your teachers already use. Interested in FlexForge for your school? Get in touch with our team!
