Enormous rideable mechs are a hallmarks of sure sorts of science-fiction — to the purpose the place they’ve their very own style that may be very well-liked in international locations like Japan. However we not often see mechs in actual life, as a result of they’re wildly costly to construct and include many engineering challenges. A big a part of the fee comes all the way down to all of the customized fabrication {that a} mech would require. However possibly 3D-printing can convey that value down and make mechs extra approachable. Ivan Miranda wished to seek out out and determined to check the thought by constructing a large 3D-printed robotic hand match for a titan.
Miranda began with the hand with the intention to show the idea and decide if this concept is even remotely possible. That does not, nevertheless, imply that this mission was simple. The hand is completely large and even a static mannequin of this dimension would have been a critical endeavor. However this is not static—it’s totally articulated and motorized. It has as many joints as an precise human hand and every of these is independently controllable. Meaning 15 particular person motors that each one must assist a major quantity of weight and ideally a decent payload.
Fortunately, Miranda has a number of large-format 3D printers that he is constructed himself over time. These let him print the over-sized elements as single elements, which most of us would have needed to break up into smaller items. Most of these had been inflexible PLA, however the pads of the fingers and on the palm had been versatile TPU.
A heavy obligation servo motor actuates every joint and an Arduino Mega board controls all of these with PWM (pulse-width modulation). Most of these servos can produce 11kg-cm of torque, which is sort of spectacular. However the servos within the palm on the base of every finger are additional beefy at 25kg-cm of torque.
Even with all of that torque, this hand is not notably sturdy. It could transfer itself with none hassle, however would wrestle to understand something heavy. The belts additionally stretch and skip underneath rigidity, however that’s solvable with stronger belts.
We aren’t positive if Miranda will construct the remainder of the mech to go together with this hand, however we’d positive like to see that.