Complete ProE model

Exploded schematic of all the parts

From the Draft View, we were able to export .dxf files, which then were used to generate NC-code to mill the intricate parts.

As you can see, the actual prototype appears exactly as it does in ProE.

Meet: Neal Poeppelmeier, '04

I am the Mechanical Engineer on Team Jack of All Trades (JAT) and my main responsibility was co-designing our mechanical hand with Jon. I also machined the intricate aluminum parts (Jon made the beautiful wooden mitt) in the ME Machine Shop and "screwed and glued" it all together.

Thanks to this project, I now have nightmares about evil mechanical hands.

contact: nmp@northwestern.edu

 

 

Mechanical Design:

Jack is comprised of 5 major components. The wooden mitt (H2) acts in place of 4 seperate fingers. Then there is the hand/palm (H1) and 3 parts to the thumb (T1,T2, T3). The T1 thumb piece allows for the thumb to be rotated about the wrist to change between lateral and tip prehension. The T2 piece is the middle segment, which holds the servo, and the T3 piece is the contact point for the thumb. There is a servo for the hand, wrist, and thumb, each is represented by a small black box (SW, SH, ST). Pockets were milled in T1, T2, and H2 to reduce the gravitational component of the torque the servo motors needed to output. In the exploded view you can see the the pins that act as the axis of rotation and the pulley, which wrenches up the mitt.