I installed two tensioners for the robot and they were seriously successful overall in testing. So much so that I am now confident enough in the entire pulley system to move onto the custom mini BLDC motor controller to get the motor to run motorized tests of finger movements next. Well after a couple very minor tweaks that is.



So the first tensioner I installed on the extension part of the index finger joint we are working on. I used the bracelet cord folded in half and fishing crimp sleeved then sewn into the bone fabric. It seems just about perfect except for one thing: I want to keep it under mild constant tension but the bone fabric creeps/moves slowly when put under constant tension like this because it is taped into place on the bone after all. The tape is allowing the movement. This means it does not stay put and my anchor points move over time so I can't set a tension and rely on it staying at that tension long term. To resolve this I need a mechanical connection at the tension point anchoring location.









To mechanically connect my anchor point, I have decided to use tiny self tapping screws. I have avoided screwing into the bones till now but I'm making an exception here. The screws won't be going that deep and the finger bones are unlikely to break anyways IMO. So I feel comfortable with this. Here's the screws I ordered for this from Amazon:









Next, I created a tensioner for the middlemost archimedes pulley. That pulley was creating significant drag and slowing down the finger extension during testing due to rope friction. So adding a tensioner line to pull it back down toward the fingers during extension was my solution for this. It worked amazingly well. To make this, first I tied off a fishing hook eye to the bottom of the radius bone just above where my TPFE guide tubing entrance is. Then I glued a 7cm piece of bracelet cord to a piece of 6lb test .08mm braided pe fishing line with 401 glue. I secured the top of the bracelet cord to the top of the archimedes pulley system and then threaded the other end through the fishing hook eye and back up and to the bottom of the archimedes pulley where I tied it off. So it ties off at top, comes down to bottom, goes through the fishing eye then comes back up and connects to my pulley. It creates just enough downward pull to delete the rope drag slowing down that pulley from coming down and this enables the system to unwind and extend back to its starting point after each time I contracts/pulls upward to cause finger contraction. This means the finger extension now happens swiftly with no hangups and the whole archimedes pulley system is now under constant tension at all times which keeps things neat and prevents tangling issues pre-emptively. This rig was a massive success and took up hardly ANY space at all. I put the post it notes behind the archimedes pulley tensioner so you can see it. It's hard to see otherwise without a contrasting backdrop. It works amazingly well.