Building a better squeezer (Patreon)

Hi Guys.

I know I promised an update on SR6 beta but I've made some progress with the squeezing mechanism project so I thought I'd share this with you. SR6 is still motoring along but it'll be a few days before I have something to show.

A short while back I made a blog video about my past work with squeezing mechanisms. What I want to do is to be able to build a squeezing orifice into the base of a modular case, potentially as an extra scriptable axis. The inspiration for this is the old Realtouch device and indeed this is what the mechanism (white GIF) is based on.

I do confess however that ever since I released that video I've had a nagging concern about the device. It works great when it's surrounded with the silicone sleeve, but if I released this design I would live in terror of those sharp corners being whizzed up and down peoples' irreplaceable hardware. This wasn't a problem for the Realtouch of course because it didn't move in the same way.

So I've had this problem in the back of my head for a while and in the last few days I had flash of inspiration, which I had to model up and try. As you can see this alternative mechanism has no sharp corners, and it can also be built so that there is a minimum aperture size built in.

In case you're interested, this new mechanism (red GIF) is the one that was used by the space shuttle's robot arm to grab satellites in space, so at least we're getting something back from the space program.  

This whole mechanism fits into the equivalent of the bottom end of a fleshlight case. The eventual aim is to drive it with a servo. Should be quite fun if anybody wants to script it, and of course support for it can be built into the VaM plugin. 

Ah well, enough distractions! Back to the SR6 Beta design!  

All the best!

Tempest