Swimming with the Beast

Shea decided today to take her Cyborg Beast (with the short star gauntlet) for a swim! She loved it and had a blast. She mostly did the doggie paddled with it because she said it was easier with it because her hand floated on it's own!  

shea's hand video

form-fit tests

modifications and tests

I managed to do some modeling today. I printed a hand section from one of Shea's 3D scans last night and then worked on creating a test outline of a palm section that fits her thumb better than the the hands I've made thus far. I wanted to make something that would give her the room she needs, yet try not to make the knuckle block too large or long across the palm section. Working the printed thumb into the correct location with the bump-out for her thumb is the real challenge. Then on top of that, how to make it look good. I am trying to keep the design general enough that it allows for universal application for users who have more thumb than typical, in hopes that it might help people in need, but I am also playing with just making something that is more form fit to Shea specifically. I'll have pics of the the more form fit design soon, but for know I just have the generalized shape palm. I've yet to make this look really good, but I'm inching closer and closer to getting something that fit's properly at least. The yellow version with palm top still needs a lot of details added: like cable routing, etc. but I like the fact that I can keep this design tighter to the hand (with the addition of thin foam on the inside) without having to make it much larger like I would have to do with the pink palm frame. The pink frame would require leather or something similar to the talon hand, thus getting larger to allow for the material between the hand and inside frame.

build from mesh

import mesh

create a editable polysurface from the mesh using "meshtonurb"

the command creates a polysurface copy from the mesh

delete the original mesh

  

generate a 2D curve outline from the mesh that we can later use for drawing a new model

the outline can be created from each viewport to give you an orthographic like drawing to re-construct a solid model.

explode the curve outline so you can modify the outline if desired

Here are a few pics of how I start fresh in building a "clean" model in Rhino from a mesh. The intent is to use the mesh as a starting point from which to modify and build something new. Adream and I have been taking about the inability to modify the mesh without turning it into modified "garbage" file. I suggested this route of building anew.  I just wanted to show this visually for our students who may be modifying things in the weeks to come. They are all new to Rhino so I think this might help them. In this case I took Peter Binkley's Talon hand that Ivan had modified to be slightly larger. I'll post more in coming posts.

laser engraved gaunlet

We laser cut the gauntlet for the Talon hand for Shea. There may be a few things to update when we put the tensioner on but this is the gist.