14 DAY TRIAL // Adding to the increasing list of 3D printed prosthetic hands is the Artificial Muscle Robot Hand, which is exactly what it says on the tin: a hand with actual muscles, albeit artificial ones.
Most of the 3D printed prosthetics revealed so far, and many of the normal ones, use strings in order to have the digits fold or extend.
The new one that Instructables user Mikey77 just introduced, however, uses actual muscles made from silicone.
The hand he made is powered by compressed air and is soft on the outside. He used a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer to create the parts and molds from PLA plastic.
Four hand bones were printed first, one for each finger, then two more for the thumb. 3D printed break-apart molds were made to cast artificial muscles.
With each finger cast in one 3D printed mold, that leads to fingers with 3 muscles, soft bones between the muscles, and even fingertips. Definitely a step up from all those angular plastic hands running about the web.
Mikey77 even made skin, using Skinmold.stl to make a mold and then placing an acrylic sheet over it, weighed in to make it thin.
The full step-by-step guide can be found on the Instructables website of course. The pneumatic controller gets a separate Instructable of its own, as do the 3D printed muscles.
