Well when you are designing your own hand you need to accomplish two things. Your mechanism needs to close the hand but then it needs to also automatically open the hand. So each finder has two wires in it. One wire runs on the palm side of the finger and it goes from my actual finger to the end of the animatronic one, running through all the finger joints on the way. This wire closes the finger. The second wire runs along the back of the hand. I runs from a piston mounted behind the finger to the tip. This wire works to straighten the finger back out. So as I pull on the cord that runs to my actual hand it curls the finger and this causes the other cord to compress the piston so that when I release pressure the finger will straighten back out.
Brilliant! I'm new here, and this is my first view of the kinds of things that are uploaded. However, I am a woodworker, and I am really impressed by the craftmanship in this. Would you mind telling me what the rods are made of? They look to be small diameter copper, but I assume that they need to be flexible so I am not sure.
The cable running through the fingers is just steel aircraft cable. If you mean the copper pieces behind the fingers that is made from copper pipe, brass door stops, springs, and finishing washers (the raised curvy ones.) They work together as a piston that pulls on a second cord running through the fingers to straighten them back out. You can see what I'm talking about a little more easily in my deviation "Thriller."
I'm new here, and this is my first view of the kinds of things that are uploaded. However, I am a woodworker, and I am really impressed by the craftmanship in this.
Would you mind telling me what the rods are made of? They look to be small diameter copper, but I assume that they need to be flexible so I am not sure.