Goal

Our goal in creating the mechanical design of the hand was to make something that is easy to 3D-print, and something that provided ease of access to internal components so that we could make adjustments readily. If you look through our iterations and our final design, you will notice that all of our parts fit together using friction fit. We wanted our product to be easily assembled and taken apart so that we would troubleshoot and replace parts conveniently. This made for easier prototyping, and helped us simplify our design. In addition, we also wanted our hand to be anatomical so that it looks clearly like a hand.

Final Product

Previous Iterations and Challenges

At the beginning of this project, our hand was simply a block with straight holes creating routes for the fishing line. This was for proof of concept and to see the project work without supports making an easier print.

Then we moved towards a more anatomical design, creating a rounded palm.

Next we elongated the palm to make the hand more realistic, and created a wrist portion that could friction fit onto our hand and enclose our hardware.

We also began creating our fingers. Here we included a separate piece for each part of the finger, along with caps at the top of the fingers so that we can easily access the strings controlling the fingers.

The next thing that we focused on was making servo mounts inside the arm. We made mounts for 5 servo motors.