Large wearable mechanical hands.

[Lothahnus]

I am currently in the process of gathering all the material i need for this project. I have been thinking about it for quite some time. have never seen this done before in the way I plan on doing this. The hands i am making will be functional as in you will be able to lift object as heavy as a chair. Open any door and so forth without removing your hands. All 4 fingers and the thumb will move independently so in essence they will be fully functional hands. Of course I have not figured out a way to move the fingers side to side so there will be limits.


I have most of the materials I need and the process will be slow until I get the prototype together. (I got a newborn so he makes it hard to get anything done).

I am still working on a way to attach the hand to my arm. (all on paper still with only a few cheap tinkerings to see if things work.

I am making a pair for myself and if they turn out well I am making them so a skin can be put on them so you can have big-foot hands, hulk hands, ect....

My question is is there a market for these if they turn out well? I am my own worst critic so unless they turn out to my ideals then I would never consider making them for someone else. But if they turn out like I want them too I would love to make them for others. Just wanted some input on weather or not people would like these or not.

 

[punisher]

Sounds pretty cool. Will it be like the plastic robo hand toys that attach to tour arm and your fingers go into rings that you squeeze to make the hand move?

 

[Ryan]

How big will they be? This sounds like it will look great, and be used for lots of fun! Wear them out in public and say you were in a car accident, and when you woke up these were attached to your arms! Hehe!

 

[Lothahnus]

Sounds pretty cool. Will it be like the plastic robo hand toys that attach to tour arm and your fingers go into rings that you squeeze to make the hand move?

Kinda like that if I know what toy your talking about. I figure they will be a little on the heavy side when done. Like 4-6 pounds. i will do whatever i can to make them lighter but I want strength as well as looks. I don't want to have to wait for someone to open a door for me or to move a chair for me. I want to be able to shake hands and stuff like that. I figure it will be as strong as my own hand. I have so pretty fine steel mess cable that weighs almost nothing I will use for the tendons and I found some really strong really small tension springs for retracting the finger back to straight. I have not decided how to use the device yet as in if I will attach the tendons to an interior glove or use a ring/lever system. Both are rather simple so either way it should work. The hardest part on my drawings and in my head is making the thumb work. But I believe i have that sorted out.

Like I mentioned the attachment to my arm is where I draw a blank. I have though of using leather bracers with added mounts to hold the device. I have even thought of a glover I could attach the tendons to could also have a hard extension that would go all the way to the elbow. I am undecided at this time on that. First I need to get my prototype up and going.

 

[Lothahnus]

How big will they be? This sounds like it will look great, and be used for lots of fun! Wear them out in public and say you were in a car accident, and when you woke up these were attached to your arms! Hehe!

well my hand when I straighten them out and put all my fingers with no gaps is about 5 inches wide by 7 inches long. So I figure I would scale it up to maybe 7 inches wide and 10 inches long. But this is open for discussion because I have not decided yet. It also kinda depends on how it looks with the material I have on hand. I may be force to make them bigger or smaller so it looks proportional. And Once I have a working hand I can get a better idea on how to make it better. Right now its all in my mind. As crazy as that is. But I could make them any size someone wanted them to be of course. Once I make my own set.

 

[dirty tusken]

I found this on here awhile ago.
Steampunk Hand in Walkthrough by ~aternox on deviantART
made myself a set and they work great. plus they where fairly cheap and you can build them in an afternoon.

 

[Lothahnus]

I found this on here awhile ago.
Steampunk Hand in Walkthrough by ~aternox on deviantART
made myself a set and they work great. plus they where fairly cheap and you can build them in an afternoon.

Will have to look at this at home. Firewall here at work won't let me look.

 

[dirty tusken]

check it out. there is a video of them in action on the link to.

 

[Lothahnus]

check it out. there is a video of them in action on the link to.

That is pretty cool but the thumb is deficient. Your thumb has a third bone as well just hidden by skin. To get the full action of a thumb at least as close as I can get it I will make the thumb with the third bone like in a real hand. The only action my hand should be missing is the side to side action of the fingers and thumb. As I just don;'t see a reasonable way to make those movement without a lot more money and a lot more parts.

I do like the way he attached it and that I will have to give some thought as i do not want to steal someone else's idea.

As soon as I have something worth looking at I will post some pic's and drawings. Don't expect too much from the drawings I make though. I just use them for guide lines on what is running through my head.

 

[keikeo]

Yeah this is a really cool idea. I was actually having an idea to make a suit that i will use huge hands with. I think that if you were to want to sell it i think people would buy

 

[Immortal Goat]

I think there would be a decent market for things like this. Just think about it. A working Hellboy-hand, lol!

 

[Lothahnus]

Basically I am just making the skeleton, so in essence you could make it work with any costume. Thats the idea anyway

 

[ShackMan]

Cool idea, and I really like that Steampunk project. I made some HUGE hands a couple of years back. Similar to the steampunk idea, but used steel cable instead of string, and used PVC pipe instead of a barbeque fork. Ran the cables down through the PVC instead of on the inner edge of the finger. I had one nearly finished and the other started when the project fell apart ... never got any pictures though.

Think my hand size was about 8 inches wide and around a foot long (maybe just a bit more). One thing the steampunk hand that mine didn't was the opposable thumb; thumb was in a fixed position on mine. Oh well ...

 

[BumblebeeRecycd]

I find the thumb to be the most challenging part, I wish the video showed how it was linked better, but the execution was very well done. Good luck on your project.

 

[Lothahnus]

The thumb is easy unless you want to add movement in any direction. making the thumb close is just a matter of routing the cable the right way.

I will be running 2 cables per finger/thumb. One for closing and one for opening. The one for closing will be running to my fingers. Opening will be running to a tension spring that will be mounted on the backside of the hand. In essence it will be the same as the tendons in your hand.

To get motion in all directions with my method would be much harder as I would have to run 3 cables to my thumb and making a mini harness bracket around my thumb so that whatever movement I made with my thumb the fake thumb would follow. I most likely will not be doing this as it would make it very difficult. But I may experiment with it in the future.

 

[keikeo]

sounds cool. how much would you be guessing this might cost you to make?

 

[Lothahnus]

sounds cool. how much would you be guessing this might cost you to make?

Well the prototype I am making out of pieces I got from work that they were throwing out and anything I can scrap. I will still probly end up have to shell out like 50 dollars. I think if I had to buy all materials it would cost me about 100-200 dollars. But we will see. It may be it cost me less. When I have a set ready I will figure out how much it will cost me to recreate them with all new parts. This is a slow project right now though as I stated before I have a 5 month old little boy that is very demanding of my free time and if he is not crying for it my 5 year old is. When I have it all done and figured out i will post all the requested information. And once done and they work like I want them too. I will be posting on the junkyard for anyone that is interested. I will try to make anything I make as inexpensive as possible but keeping the quality high. I plan on using these myself and I want them to last. If all I come up with is crap i will never sell them.

 

[Sparticle]

I made something similar to this. The fingers were spring-loaded in the open position so when released, they would flex open. The thumb was fixed on mine as well.

The hand is gone now and there are no surviving photos *sigh*

 

[Lothahnus]

Well after 2 years of delay I am finally starting to build my hand. Real life has a way of making you put everything you want to do on hold for ungodly amounts of time. Hopefully i will have some pics soon.

 

[Lothahnus]

Well I started them. I used some store bought hinges which was a mistake. I need to make some hinges. I already have a design. Shouldn't be too hard to make.