Herkulex Brackets & Wheels Hit the U.S.

I’ve posted about Herkulex servos before.  In case you’ve been living in a cave, these are a new line of smart servos from a Korean company called Dongbu.  I love ’em — they’re strong, compact, affordable, easy to mount, and smarter than even the Other Leading Brands of smart servos.

But until now, if you’ve wanted to actually build a bot out of these things in the United States, you had pretty much two options: buy a full humanoid robot kit, or make all your own brackets from scratch.  That’s because the Herkulex brackets and other accessories were simply not available here.  I even got so desperate as to look into buying them online in Japan or Korea, and having them shipped here, but got discouraged when I started adding up the fees, not to mention the complications.

That’s why today’s news is such good news: Road Narrows Robotics has started carrying a wide range of Herkulex brackets, wheels, and other accessories.  You’ll find pretty much everything you need here to build whatever bot you can imagine from the ground up, and all quite reasonably priced.  For example, you can get four of this U-bracket for $3; that’s less than a buck apiece.

I know it again sounds like I’m working for Road Narrows, but I’m not; I don’t even get a coupon code for all this blogging.  (They’re probably respecting my journalistic integrity!)  It’s just that I really do think these Herkulex servos are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and want to see more hobbyists building cool bots with them.  But without brackets, it’s hard to do very much with them; and some of us don’t have the metal-bending or 3D-printing skills to easily make our own.  These are the same brackets used in the Hovis Lite, Evo, and Genie robots, but buying them separately lets you start small (with, say, a 4-servo walker), or design something entirely different, like a hexapod or a chicken walker.

So, props to Road Narrows for carrying this great new line of gear.  Go buy some!