When I was in grade 8 my science fair project was a robotic hand made with hand made solenoids. It worked pretty well overall but, when I needed to make stuff with Servo Socks to show how they work, I knew I wanted to re-visit the hand.
I wanted to see if there would be a way to use a cable or wire to push and pull so that the servos didn't have to be in the hand itself. I tried random of bits of different kinds of tube and wire combinations until I figured out that poly waterline with aircraft cable was the perfect combo!
The next thing was finding a material for the fingers that would supply support, be flexible and have a memory. The rubber straps I found from One-Tie were great (they are for strapping things up). They even had slotted holes for fastening them. I did have to use washers so that the screws would pull through the rubber.
I then cut out the bits and pieces or wood and plastic lumber I had around to make the arm and finger pieces. I then ran the 1/4" tubing through the arm and into the hand. I then used bits of the rubber straps for the wrist.
I cut the inactive disc side of the servo socks to make them narrower then mounted them to the arm in an offset pattern.
To push pull the fingers I screwed short plywood sticks onto the Servo Sock discs I then crimped wire eyelets onto the ends of the wires to mount with some washers and a screw to the sticks to create the push/pull motion.
Once I had it all working I hooked up the 24ch controller and wrote some animations and positions for the hand.
It was a great revisit of a project I did over 20 years ago!
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