Prototyping some finger extensions

    Due to the stretchy filament being a little more time consuming and complicated I decided to go with making finger extensions (plus I really really need to wear them)

    At first I felt guilty that I was just copying something that someone had done, but then I realized that was probably fine as I was not going to just use an exact model, and for instance a bug chess set might just be copying what bugs look like and that's a cool idea (haha).

    I wanted to understand how the fingers worked, so I rewatched the video of the Mythbusters guy wearing the fingers, as well as looked at some plans someone on Thingverse has reverse engineered of Gary Fay's articulated fingers. Even looking at them I admit I was a bit confused, and decided that I needed to actually hold them and fiddle with them to figure them out. I decided to look for easy articulated hand crafts since it seemed like a common thing- I seemed to remember making not wearable ones out of straws and string when I worked at the daycare and the kids were obsessed with skeletons. I found a few videos of people making them out of popsicle sticks, but one video was confusing and the other one looked pretty janky. Eventually I found a video titled "Lady Gaga Chromatic Claw DIY" uploaded by someone called Operation Let's Do It on Youtube. He used PVC pipes, and also unlike Gary instead of having gears on top of the knuckles move the parts he just has a push rod underneath, which seems simpler and I am now okay with that because I am realizing that I need to prototype many many parts. Since I just wanted to understand how they worked, I decided to follow along with just a cardboard box, some staples and a bag of brads that I had for some reason. Watching instructional videos is somewhat irritating sometimes because you'll watch the person do something basic forever then suddenly he just rushes through an important part. He also did not show measurements for everything, which was okay- I just eyeballed it, and plus I would need to remeasure things for my fingers anyways.

    I wound up making... something. it did seem to work to a degree, but I could tell that the smooshing of the cardboard, which was of course not structurally strong, by the staples really closed off a lot of the space that the parts need to flow freely through to move. I think that is enough for me to start prototyping!

    I also bought tri-color filament because I think it'll look sweet. I'll try it for my little cup test to see what it is like, but I will do all my prototyping of the fingers with the pla thats provided.

So after I had printed the cup I decided it was time to make my first printed finger prototype. I decided that I would prototype it for one finger, then once I got that working I would scale it for other fingers and see how that worked out, then finally I would make "nice" versions that had for instance visible bits shaped in a better way aesthetically, possibly even with some circuitboard looking bits to give it more of a robot feel. That could wind up just being stretch goals depending on how long it takes to figure this out. 

I didn't want to get  distracted so I walked my dog then I went to a neighbourhood cafe because even though nobody cares  I feel like everyone there will know if I am not doing work. I was really bad at taking screenshots of what I was doing because I was all focused and stuff.

I did a lot of making a 2d shape and then extruding it. I was basically trying to copy the cardboard one only measure distances properly and make things one piece when possible. For the first one, I did not do any joinery as I figured I could just connect them somehow and worry about all that later.

I arranged all the bits close together so that they would fit on the tray, but when I put them into slicer they seemed to be drifting all over the place and not on the surface. So I went back into rhino and rotated and moved them so that they were all on zero and then I printed!

I used draft quality and it worked well- except when I rearranged things I accidentally created an IRL unauthorized booloean union with the ring part and two other parts. 

That was fine though because from this draft I could tell that the part that the tip of my finger was too small and that I needed a cut out for a part to move through clearly, so I fixed that. Peter had said that it was possible to just print joineries right in the thing as well, so I tried making some- however then my print was too large for the print bed. 

maybe I can reposition it a bit later, but for now I just print the joineries out with only one part of the "pin" being larger, I imaging that after I insert them possibly I can just touch the end with a soldering iron to flatten it out.

After I printed the new parts out thankfully there was no dumb accidental booleans but I had cut the wrong part out of a piece to allow one of the rods to pass through, so I went back the reprinted that part again on Sunday before work and just picked it up after. I also cut it a bit smaller. I am going to assemble it now.

Some of the joiney pins were not big enough so I just used a soldering iron to melt down filament in the groves. 

Putting it on I can tell that I need to make the two bars that help move it smaller, and I can also see parts where some of the material needs to be removed for more mobility.  I also think that making the holes aa big larger for the pins so that I can make larger ones for structural integrity would be good, but it is a good start I am getting there!