PatStarace

  Success! A Flexible Printed Circuit Board. These boards are not easy to make, so I thought, and with a little work you can make a nifty Flexible PCB. I used Adafruit’s Pyralux Flexible PCB Material. https://www.adafruit.com/products/1894 I first tried to CNC it on my engraver. As awesome as my engraver is (similar to a LPKF machine), I couldn’t engrave the copper enough without going through the backing material. I had high hopes of engraving it, and I tried small steps in my cut depth, .002″, then another .001″, and another .001″, then poof! I went through the backing. The backing is only 1 or 2 mils thick, and this was too hard to mechanically engrave without inadvertently cutting through, so I decided to take another route. Next I tried by cutting a stencil on my Roland Vinyl Cutter. First results were pretty good (for a vinyl cutter, though I needed to add more time to the etching process). Inexpensive Vinyl Cutters are quite quite popular, and I’d imagine even a Cricut would do the job. I had to delete any fine text I would have had on the board as the cutter wouldn’t hold that resolution. Using transfer film, I applied the vinyl to the board as a resist, and after a 20 minute bath in etching fluid the board was etched to the backing material.  I cut more vinyl for the pads, and hand placed them on the board. Then I covered the PCB with a cool red epoxy polymer to act as a solder mask and protect the board. I have one more to make like this. This is a great technique prototyping Wearable Technology! ~Pat Starace

After reading the many touching requests for the 3D Printed Iron Man Child’s Prosthetic Hand a perfect child was found. 12 hour drive to Texas, it was given to Tyler for his Eighth Birthday. Seeing Tyler put the Iron Man Hand on and light it up, and the huge smile on his face made this the best day ever.

Tyler was soon High-Fiving, and shaking hands.

The Iron Man Hand was custom designed to fit Tyler, and a few cool features were added including NinjaFLEX Finger Tips for Super-Hero Grip.

The build process faced many challenges, Tyler’s hand required a 90% reduction from the original prototype I created. Scaling down 90% sounds easy, but not so quick. While scaling down the 3D Printed parts for the hand wasn’t too big of an issue, the electronics don’t scale with the hand. I had to rework the design and scale up the electronics in CAD, so that when I scaled down the hand model the electronics would be the appropriate size.

The FIRE! One week before delivery, I noticed the stepper motor mounts for the 3D printer starting to tilt. WHAT! The steppers were overheating and the mounts were melting. I stopped the print and went into damage control. I thought if I just tightened up the belts, I could finish this up and deal with new mounts later. While tightening up the belts (I wasn’t near any electronics) I saw something bright out of the corner of my eye. The controller was on FIRE! I blew it out, and it came right back. I blew it out, and it came right back again, so I pulled the plug. It was a driver board on the controller that had given it’s life for this noble cause. I had a spare and crossed my fingers that the controller wasn’t fried. This seemed to work, but I knew the controller was probably compromised and might not make it to the end, but thankfully it did. (Thanks Deez).

Finishing was another story, but I’ll leave that for another time.

IT HAD TO LIGHT UP!!! We left at 3:00am for a 1,200 mile drive to Texas, and with the time zone difference we would gain an hour. We would be cutting it close but we were up for the task. Did I mention that the electronics weren’t finished yet. I had promised myself that Tyler would be able to put the Iron Man Hand on and ‘Light It Up’, and there would be no compromise. So, while driving through Louisiana I took out my butane powered micro torch/soldering iron, and started to solder up the hand while we were driving on I 10. I was soldering as my friend Dan was driving and calling out “Bump” every time we would run over a seam in the road. These are 30 gauge wires we’re talking about, and for those of you that unfamiliar with the term, it’s pretty small. After a couple of tedious hours, the Iron Man Hand “Lit Up”, was complete and ready for deployment to Iron Kid.

What made me want to spend the hundreds of hours to creates this? The answer is simple, I wanted to help a child. Tyler is an AMAZING Young Boy, and I look forward to continue development of the Iron Man Hand with Tyler, and his awesome family.

~Pat Starace

IRON MAN 3D Printed Child’s Prosthetic Hand.

How can we help a child that faces everyday challenges with a disability? My answer is to give them the most awesome prosthetic hand, and raise their self esteem to Super Hero Levels. The vision was to create a hand, so that a child can have something that solves a mechanical challenge, is affordable, and mostly Looks Awesome!

Design goals:
1) It had to look awesome
2) It had to perform awesome
3) Hide all the strings, so nothing distracts from the magic.

Thank You,

Your pal,
Pat Starace
(The mechanic)

I’d love to be part of a Research & Development Group that’s shaping the future.

 My Goal is to give this hand in the video to a child  for FREE, and collaborate with e-Nable a group that advocates for 3D Printed Prosthetics. .

REQUEST THE IRON MAN HAND HERE

If you’re a kid or a parent of a child that needs this, please contact me

Requests have been streaming in, and I will reply to everyone.

Articles:

Laser Beaming, Thruster Equipped 3D Printed Iron Man Kids Prosthetic Hand – Full Length Story – 3DPRINT.COM ( This was my first article. It’s in-depth and complete with much info)

3D Printed Prosthetic Hand Turns Kids Into Iron Man – KGW.COM () (THIS IS A MUST WATCH – Portland TV News did an AMAZING What’s Trending Cover Story)

3D Printed Iron Man Child Prosthetic Hand – CNET Tomorrow Daily Video Review (ANOTHER MUST WATCH) Thank you Ashley Esqueda and Rich DeMuro.

Artificial Hand Makes Kids Feel Like Tony Stark – KOTAKU.COM

3D-Printed-Prosthetic-Iron-Man-Hand-Not-Grown-Built/ – CNET.com

3D-Printed-Prosthetic-Makes-Kids-Feel-Like-Iron-Man/ – ATMEL CORPORATION

3D-Printed Prosthetic Hand Could Make Kids Feel Like Iron Man – MASHABLE.COM

Iron Man Hand Will Make Kids Feel Like SuperHeros – GIZMODO.COM

3D Printed Goes Hand In Hand With Iron Man Inspired Prosthetic – HACKADAY.COM

3D Printed Prosthetic Hand Lets Kids Feel Like Iron Man – 3DERS.ORG

3D Printed Iron Man Will Make Kids Feel Super – WASHINGTONPOST.COM

Tech Info:

How long did it take? It took me a little over a month from start to finish. I started by modeling the hand in Maya, and ZBrush using a Wacom PL500, the geometry was then imported into Solidworks for surfacing, mechanical design, assembly, and simulation. It was then output as a series of .stl files.

People have been asking what type of printer I used.

Printer: Bukobot Vanilla V1

Extruder: Budaschnozzle 2.0c w/ 0.35mm nozzle

Filament: Makergeek ABS 3mm Red/Gold

Extruder temp: 230c

Bed temp: 110c

Print speed: 40mm sec, I could go much fast, but wanted to play safe.

Repetier Host was used for short prints.

Pronterface was used for longer prints using the SD Card.

Slicer: Cura

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Google Cardboard showed up at the door today. I bought the DodoCase, and the first impression is that the cardboard could be a little thicker, but all in all it’s a pretty well constructed kit. We’re really interested in the quality of the lenses, and I’ll have more on that as the process continues. I’m planning on using this with the iPhone, so I might have to overcome a few obstacles, but none of which I’m too concerned about.

In Unity3D, I created a quick scene with two cameras, and connected them up to the gyro/mag of the iPhone and it didn’t take long before I had a working demo. The field of view is much smaller than that of the Oculus Rift. I first thought that might be a bad thing, but after using it for awhile I didn’t get ‘sim sick’ (and I usually do).  The disconnect of the user from having a full immersive field of view could be a positive in not getting ‘sim sick’.

More testing to come.

~Pat

Leap Motion SDK v2 Realtime Performance in Unity3D. This is a demo showing the major improvements in the new sdk. This is a marionette type puppet created and rigged in Maya. The controller is coded in C#, and is a mix of IK and FK in Unity. The controller drives the strings that control the limbs. Two hands are used to control the puppet, and the results are stable, reliable and very fast.

Below is the Leap v1 driving my animatronic learning kits using processing, and an Arduino.