Knowing how important Bender's hands are to him, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to build them.
I'd been collecting his fingers for ages - the fingers are discharged CO2 cylinders from life jackets. I tripped over some at work one day and recognised the shape. The guys on shift, and maintenance saved them for me and I ended up with enough to make 4 hands. I'm retaining the spare fingers in the hope of redesigning the hands in the future.
As with everything else in Bender, I started with scrap 4mm galv sheet. I marked out a number of disks, 2 to match the diameter of the arm pipe, 2 to match the inside diameter of the hand, and 2 to match the diameter of the flared hand. The largest plate (flared diameter) was then marked out with 3 radially spaced holes to match the diameter of the Co2 cylinders. (finger plate)A central hole was also drilled in all plates for the retaining bolt.
The above photo shows the components which make up the hand. From left to right across the edge of the welding table the parts are; Arm plate with captive nut, wrist plate, captive retaining bolt, pipe spacer, finger plate, 3 fingers.
The retaining bolt has had the threads nearest the head undercut so the bolt can spin in the wrist plate and not fall out, or bind. The spacer pipe seperates the wrist and finger plates.
The pieces above the components on the table include the made up shroud, but that will be discussed more in the next page (part 2).
The components assembled. The arm plate has been welded to the end of the arm, the wrist and finger plates welded to the spacer pipe with the retaining bolt already captive in the wrist plate prior to welding. The fingers were set through the holes, with a moderate degree of flaring, and then welded in place. Another view of the the assembled hand structure is shown below...
Part 2 of "Grabby and Squeezy" will cover the construction and fitting of the shroud, and placing the hands on the arms.
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