Folks.
I hate designing hands. Not really, but its kind of frustrating. Last session, I talked about how I am trying to design my very own hand, that is fully direct drive and 20 DOF(degree of freedom), so that there is a much greater range of the sign language vocabulary available. However, very quickly I realized that direct drive motors, involve embedding motors within the finger linkages, which leads to the motor size dictating the finger size.
Unfortunately the motor, I am going with(N20), is about as compact and powerful as I could find for this application. Not to mention they’re cheap, and include encoders for positional readings. The motors themselves, account for a very big finger, but also the finger joints being bevel joints make it significantly larger as well.
Thus, this session, I tried compacting the bevel joint, by using shorter gears, and removing free space. Halfway into this design revision I realized that clearing the free space in the bevel joint, would shorten its range of motion from 90 degrees to somewhere around 65. The first objective of this hand is to be highly dexterous, so I had to abandon the idea of shrinking the joint. I also got rid of bearing, because of the added complexity and material costs, they brought.
Next session, I intend to work on the roll axis of the finger, and then hopefully develop a palm, that can combine 4 fingers. But that’s all for now folks…
PS: the screenshot is of fusion crashing, because it keeps doing that ;(