Who We Are

You’ve got a great idea for an automaton. You sketch it out, get excited, and then the questions begin: How am I going to make this work mechanically? Suddenly you’re thinking about gears, cams, ratios, and speeds instead of the movement and story you wanted to create.

Maybe you’ve read articles and blogs about gear types or even tried making a few yourself. But somewhere along the way, the creative spark gets buried under technical hurdles. I’ve been there. I found myself spending more time making gears and cams than bringing ideas to life, and the excitement faded fast. I knew there had to be a better way.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The mystery of gear ratios and cam shapes shouldn’t stand between you and your creativity. It’s time to stop engineering and start creating.

Years ago, I used to visit a Timberkits shop in Houston. It felt like a small taste of the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre—rows of delightful mechanisms you could play with before choosing a kit. That fascination with movement eventually led me to start the American Robotics Academy in 2000, teaching basic engineering principles to elementary school students using LEGO®. We were thrilled when our students’ automata appeared in Sarah Reast’s Automata for Beginners.

I later founded the American Automata Academy with the same intention, but with automata as the medium for expression. No one should abandon a great idea just because they don’t know how to carve wood or fabricate gears. The beauty of cams, gears, levers, and presentation boxes is undeniable—but the movement and the message always come first.

One of the earliest challenges was addressing the “below deck” mechanics that every automaton needs. You have to feel comfortable with the tools that bring your scene to life. That’s why our first mission was to create a reliable box and a set of common mechanical solutions that let you focus on your idea, not the engineering hurdles. Once you understand how to make your actions come alive, you can take all the time you want crafting the parts that express your artistic vision.

Under the hood, automata rely on cams, gears, ratchets, and levers of all shapes and sizes. But why spend countless hours making gears just to test whether a ratio or cam style works? I wanted a way to snap components into place and test an idea in seconds.

Now, that’s possible. You can cut through the mechanics and get straight to the artistic message.

So… welcome to the Animation Station.

There are many more ratio combinations possible. These represent the most basic.

Within the “Animation Station”  package, there are:

• Nine horizontal ports for the automata drive shafts.
• Fifteen vertical ports for the animation of the objects above deck.
• The horizontal spacing of the ports for the horizontal shafts matches the Lego gear spacing to allow for multiple combinations of gear reductions and increases.
• A wooden pawl and ratchet to stop the drive-shaft from turning backwards, if desired.
• Gears, cams and spacers are all designed to fit snugly on the horizontal drive-shafts and vertical cam-following pegs.
• Wood crank handle.
• Top deck can be adjusted forward or back to gain additional space in your scene.
• Gears and cams can be locked tight, if necessary, with snugging spacers on each side.

For a detailed list of materials in the Animation Station package, find out What’s in the Box?

Using Lego® gears allows you to go into the whole world of Lego® Technic mechanics, and their unlimited possibilities. Your gear trains can go outside the frame or on the inside, anywhere along the line.

You may need only one gear combination in your automata design, but where it goes and the ratio you need are at your fingertips.

We recommend that you glue the sides, base and crossbrace. Leave the top loose for easy access and positioning.