INDN 252: Tendon Stretching

 Not sure what's up with my camera today... It's being a little bit funny. But anyway, I finally got around to printing out my joints that I talked about and designed in the last post for this class. It printed out quite well, but somewhere between University and home, I lost the knee cap. Not surprising, really, considering how small it was.

The joint itself works quite well, but is rather finnicky, and doesn't work nearly as smoothly as the very first joint I made. The first one, while connected together in a way that the knee isn't, had a much better range of motion and natural movement than this form.

This form is just not the best expression of my movement as a whole. It definitely works, but for the final form, I feel like combining these aesthetics with the functionality of the first piece would be ideal.

Working the tendons onto the piece wasn't that easy, but worked reasonably well in the end. It meant that the two parts of the joint stayed together, connected to one another, but i have a feeling that if applied across the actual movement, it would significantly constrain the motion and make the joint rather tricky to maneuver.

The range of motion is another problem with this form. It isn't a true range of motion, as it constrains itself at about 90 degrees, when the knee actually has a range of motion of about 140 degrees. So it's cutting itself short by about 50 degrees, which isn't what I wanted to achieve.

What I want to achieve is a very clear, realistic movement, but veiled in an abstract form. That's what I really want to come out of this project having made.

So I think it's time to take a little step back, taking into account what I've learnt, and start a new version of the joint.