hey guys I thought I'd
show you another
project I've been
working on this is and
well it's going to be
an air muscle this
is a really convenient
way to convert
pneumatic power into
linear motion the
benefit is that an air
muscle is pretty
strong it produces a
high force but the
travel is not very
high so depending on
your application maybe
you can come up
with a gearing
solution or some sort of
a lever mechanism that
will give you the
appropriate travel so
let's get into
this thing it's
actually very simple to
build one of these I
found a really good
page on
instructables.com and I'll put
the link in the
description here and I
didn't order the exact
equipment that
was specified in the
instructables video
or a tutorial but I
will put links to
all the stuff that I
bought - so we'll
start with the core of
the muscle this
is silicone tubing
it's very stretchy
it's not really this
tubing is not
designed to carry high
pressure because
it would inflate like
a balloon it's
very very soft it
doesn't handle high
pressures and the size
is a quarter-inch
on the inside and 3/8
on the outside so
1/16 inch wall and
it's pretty cheap I
think I got 10 feet
for 10 bucks or
something like that
and the second main
component is this
woven loom and this
would be used to help
organize
electronic cabling you
put a bundle of
wires in there and it
keeps all the
wires together and
it's just woven nylon
I think oh no actually
a polyester
actually I think I'll
put that in the
description too so
first I'm just going
to show you how
stretchy this stuff is
I'm going to make a
plug out of a
quarter inch nylon
bolt and I'm just
going to cut the
threads off and then
just plug up one end
of the tubing and
to make a seal I'm
going to use a zip
tie
here's a good tip
always use the zip tie
gun these things
really work well and
they have a this
particular one has a
sensitivity or a
tension adjustment so
if I set the tension
at about two out of
four it makes it quite
tight and it
won't come out of
there so I'll cut off
a length of this maybe
about that much
and just inflate this
to show you what
it looks like as you
can see even with
just 20 or 30 psi and
there it actually
inflates just like a
balloon and yeah
that wouldn't actually
work be very
useful to us all by
itself so what we
can add to this to
make it into a
functional air muscle
is this boom so
I'll cut the wire tie
off just to make
it easier to insert in
here and actually
what I found that
works best actually is
to melt the ends just
a little bit with
a torch so that's just
that's just to
keep it from totally
coming apart when
putting together this
thing so that just
you know helps keep
the end while
inserting the tube so
I'll put in the
silicon tubing and I
find that it works
best to extend past
the tube a little
bit like this and pull
everything taut
and then on the other
end I can see
through the Loom and
I'll cut off a
little bit extra so
that the Loom fully
covers the tube up and
then we'll come
back in with the wire
tie
on that end and since
we're just kind of
testing this thing out
I'm not going to
bother putting a
decent end on the other
side I'm just going to
kind of loosely
put the wire tie on
and then the end of
this air nozzle is
tapered so that it
when I put the taper
in there and then
push the wire tied
down a little loops
try that again I'll
just use another one
the idea is that when
I cinch this thing
down the wire tie will
actually make a
pretty good air seal
there all right so
let's give this thing
a shot so there
you have it not a
whole lot of linear
motion let's check out
what we've got
the active area of
this thing is about
three and a half
inches between the wire
ties and when if I if
I pulled on this
you actually get maybe
another eighth
inch or quarter inch
of travel but we'll
just we'll measure it
from its resting
position so I'll line
up that far wire
tie with the three and
a half inch mark
and when I inflate we
get about a little
over a half inch of
travel maybe about
five-eighths of an
inch actually so
that's pretty good
it's quite strong like
I'm saying that
the most useful way to
use this is to
connect it to a lever
system or a some
sort of a mechanical
advantage system so
that you can get a
little bit more
travel out if you need
it so the next
task if we were going
to build this into
a real project would
be to come up with
an end that allows
this to be connected
to something and also
have air pass into
it and that's what I'm
going to show you
now what actually
built this into
so this is the
beginnings of a
force-feedback
joystick so in the
resting state it's
pretty easy to move
this handle around and
later on I'll add
a larger handle to it
it it definitely
wants to go back to
center but the
amount of force it
takes to move it is
not that high it's
maybe I don't know a
pounder to a force to
move the joystick
completely and you can
see how this is
built we've got four
air muscles and a
swiveling connector
here there's a
Delrin ball on the
other on the joystick
internal part there
which allows the
plate to move around
and pull the
joystick in the right
in four different
directions so I'll
show you how it works
just pick on this air
muscle and put a
little bit of now this
this tubing can
actually handle about
70 psi so this
will be good enough to
transport the air
to the device without
inflating like
that silicone tubing
and what I did was
I used a barbed pipe
fitting and
threaded that into the
edge of the
joystick and then put
another barbed
pipe fitting in the
first one so that I
have an airtight connection
going into
the air muscle and
simultaneously made
mechanical connection
with the edge of
the joystick housing
so we'll put some
air pressure on this
and you can see the
air muscle flexing
there so let's look
at what's happening on
the top side
and there's the
force-feedback in one
direction there and of
course you can
combine directions
even running two at
once I don't have the
air manifold set
up yet but of course
you could have it
do all kinds of things
like that and to
control it a little
bit better I came up
with this air manifold
I might do
another video showing
this whole project
when it's done this is
two main
components the first
component this part
is a a voltage to
pressure transducer so
if you give this thing
a voltage this
particular one takes 0
to 10 volts it
will output a pressure
in this case 3 to
120 psi so very useful
it's it doesn't
even require a power
supply you just
give it the raw
voltage and it takes
care of the rest and
the output of this
transducer is
connected to four valves
one for each of the
directions that you
saw on the joystick so
with this we'll
be able to switch on
and off the air
muscles
you only have one
pressure to choose for
the whole system but
you could turn on
one or two air muscles
to either make a
cardinal direction or
a diagonal so I
think that's about it
yeah I definitely
experiment more with
these air muscles
they're very
inexpensive to experiment
with since you just
need the loom and
the silicone tubing
and you can make
longer ones to
increase the linear
travel or use a
mechanical advantage
system so have fun
with that and let me
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