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 in style in international locations like Japan. However we hardly ever 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 associated fee comes right down to all of the customized fabrication {that a} mech would require. However perhaps 3D-printing can deliver that value down and make mechs extra approachable. Ivan Miranda needed to seek out out and determined to check the concept by constructing an enormous 3D-printed robotic hand match for a titan.
Miranda began with the hand as a way to show the idea and decide if this concept is even remotely possible. That does not, nonetheless, imply that this venture was straightforward. The hand is completely large and even a static mannequin of this dimension would have been a critical enterprise. However this is not static—it’s absolutely 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 need to assist a big quantity of weight and ideally a good 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 parts as single elements, which most of us would have needed to break up into smaller items. Most of these have been inflexible PLA, however the pads of the fingers and on the palm have been versatile TPU.
A heavy responsibility 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 further beefy at 25kg-cm of torque.
Even with all of that torque, this hand is not notably sturdy. It may well transfer itself with none bother, however would battle to know something heavy. The belts additionally stretch and skip below pressure, however that’s solvable with stronger belts.
We aren’t certain if Miranda will construct the remainder of the mech to go together with this hand, however we might certain like to see that.
