2nd Thumb Project

_{The 2nd Thumb Project © 2024 by Charlotte Malyshev is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International}

The 2nd Thumb project was started during HackKu. It was inspired by Dani Clonde but the design is completely 100% made by me and has significant difference.

How was I Inspired

I was mainly inspired by:
- Dani Clode's "Third Thumb" Project (https://www.daniclodedesign.com/thethirdthumb)
- Will Cogley's bionic hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7lJxBpecAY)
- and Ian Davis's Prosthetic hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luapSa8c9CM)

I have wanted to make a project like this for a very long time. I have had projects similar to this in the past related to prosthetics but never have done something to this scale or success. Keep in mind that only the idea of the project was used. The original 2nd thumb was designed from scratch by me during Hack KU and this project hopes to build on it

Why did I change it?

The main issue I have with the old design is its tendon based design. Lots of projects creating replicas of hands and arms use tendon based systems to move limbs; after all, our bodies use tendons and we see our body as the best solution for us. Although tendons are a decent solution for this, there are lots of problems with it:
- Tension of lines varies
- Essentially open loop (when a system outputs a signal but does not receive feedback. ex: common FDM 3d printer)
- Possible amage overtime from simple environments (ex: you cut the tendon while working in the kitchen with knives)

What Im adding in the near future:

I want to keep working on this project for personal daily use. Some things I wish I could have added, but wasn't able to are:
- Touch feedback
- Wireless control using your foot to control the thumb (inspired by Dani Clonde)
- More degrees of freedom
- Maybe strapless?
- Lower thumb attachment point
- Holes in Hand mount for breathability of skin
- Less clunk

What I need to learn to accomplish this:

- Onshape surface modeling
- More Arduino
- Electrical engineering (what are resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, etc.)

What I've learned so far:

- Bridging Curves
- Projected Curves
- Composite Curves
- Creating surfaces by lofting curves

Want to see more photos?

head up to the Gallery folder to see more!