Pneumatic artificial muscle project

thingiverse

I've been glued to YouTube again! Artificial muscles are truly amazing, but commercially available units cost at least fifty bucks. This design is still in the experimental phase. Before you mock the 'hose barbs' and their appearance, just imagine an air muscle going through hundreds of cycles using conventional nylon or brass hose fittings. It makes perfect sense. **WARNING** Always wear eye protection when working with high pressures. I can only generate about 1/2 PSI with my lungs but I can operate a blowgun. You will be working with 30-80 PSI, you don't want the power of 60-160 people shooting poison darts at you, do you? Due to the nature of my printer I am experiencing excessive air loss on all connection points. I will be increasing the size of some objects and decreasing the sizes of some holes in order to sand and ream until I have achieved acceptable system leakage. Materials: Screw M3 90 degree countersink Feed tube - 1/8" polyurethane, glue in place with Gorilla super glue Bladder - 7mm OD 5mm ID, silicone, might be too thick Braid - 1/4" PET Construction notes: Connecting bladder-braid unit to hose barbs - used thin craft wire, wrapped tight, twisted tight, cut and bent over. Being a soft robotic element and not a sharp robotics one, used heat-shrink tubing over connections, slightly longer than the hose barb. Makes a nice, safe, lightweight build. Why do this? I just wanted to make a hand to see if I could make a hand. How many muscles are actually needed? Can I increase capability without sacrificing form? Turns out they don't make solenoid operated 3 position 2 way valves NC either, let alone small enough to put in an arm. Let the study of valve design begin! This thing was made with Tinkercad. Edit it online https://www.tinkercad.com/things/ic2UKrG3mXG