Finalized wing design!

Below is the final scale drawing of the full puppet, with all the changes so far on the wing and the rest of the body combined and incorporated. We'll see how many times this still will change...

At least I think I am finally happy with the wing design... I completed the second wing using the new design, and it can move and fold in the right way now. The only issue I would have still with this design is perhaps that it moves too freely. As I changed the shoulder from one single ball joint plus a hinge joint into suddenly two ball joints + a double one at the elbow, there are many more ways it can move into, which could become confusing... But now the feather rods are on it already helps making it clearer and I think when everything is in place it should be ok. Compared to a wire armature it will still be more limited.

One other issue that came up this week was that I noticed that some of the bigger ball bearings I have been using - which were annealed by someone in the fabrication cente previously - were not entirely smooth anymore. They seem to have little dents and spots on the surface. I am afraid that it may have been caused by the annealing process, and maybe these steel balls got too hot or were too hot for too long. These balls are definitely softer then the smaller ones I annealed myself... They may be too soft. I'm not sure at the moment what I will do. I have already used the balls in several places. In the start I never noticed this damaged surface, but now every one I use seems to have it, and I can feel how it affects the smoothness of the movement in the joint. I am tempted to get new balls and anneal them myself and replace the non-smooth ones. But then it will delay things again... Maybe I will first do a proper animation test with this wing to see how bad it is.

Making new rods for the wing.

Making tiny screws even tinier. 

The new countersunk screws reduce a lot of volume from the previously sticking out screw heads. I will probably replace all of them in the other wing as well.

And here is the new wing all final and completed. Except the wire and fanning mechanism.

Really looking forward to completing the other wing in the same way now, to combine both and make an animation test with two wings...

New animation test

Still the old wing design, but with the wire extensions and possible solution for the fanning mechanism. In the mean time working on building the new wing design for the wing at the other side...

I had some doubts about the elastic band, but so far it works quite nice. Indeed it is a bit springy, but for the subtle movements needed in this part of the wing it works ok. I'm not sure though how it will work out in the hand part of the wing. Will have to just try it once I've got the new design for that finished for at least one wing. The wire works quite nice. I was thinking that the slightly thicker and therefore slightly tougher to animate wire would be nicer to work with, but actually I was more pleased with the thinner ones. Because it needs to be such subtle movement, it is easier to achieve this with the more flexible wire. But then, I don't want to move everything around when just slightly touching it... I will just have to play a bit around with different combinations I think to find what works best... Also it will take some more tests to find out what would be a good tension on the feather rods, so I don't accidentally knock them sideways, but still they are easy enough to move when pulling a feather. At the secondary feathers part where I already added the sewing elastic, it was hard to find a good balance where the rods were tightened enough to have some resistance against the elastic, but still loose enough to follow each other when pulling one.

During this test I also clearly noticed how my one ball joints are currently not working right and can not be tightened properly. The shoulder joint can in some positions just simply not carry all of the weight of the wing therefore, and so sometimes drops down, or makes other unwanted moves. That should all be resolved with the new design, hopefully...

Yep, now things are starting to move there is lots more to think about again and more problems to solve, as always...

extending feathers - trying a fanning solution

This weekend I had a go at extending the feather with wire how I originally planned it, poking the wire through the holes I made, and securing them with Polymorph (which should make it easier to replace a feather if necessary). Because I need the wire to be fairly thin, I tried strengthening it by twisting it together with copper wire. First I tried a double strand of really thin aluminium wire (can't remember the exact gauge, but much less then a mm) together with one or two strands of very thin copper wire (I only have some that is really thin). Then I didn't have any of the thin aluminium wire left, so tried it with one strand of 1mm aluminium wire with one strand of the thin copper wire. This actually seemed to get a nice balance between flexibility and strength, though I would have to test it to find out for sure.

I also bought some elastic band to try using this for the fanning mechanism. I used it double and sewed it around the flattened rods like previously with the stretchy fabric, but this time also using the holes I made to keep it at fixed at one place. I'm not fully satisfied with how it works, though it has some positive effect. At least the rods cannot move much further away from each other, and they are slightly pulling each other to follow, but not really as much as I had hoped. It does at the same time also create quite a bit of elastic tension, that might make it harder during animating to make subtle movements... I'm considering of I should for the secondary feathers just use a non-stretchy kind of fabric, as the feathers don't really have to move much separately from each other, but the primaries still need to...

Good advice & changing the design again

The first Monday after the break I went to Puppet's place in Bristol to meet Hanna Habermann, a very experienced stop motion armature and model maker. We talked about how to improve the shoulder joints, how to make better one ball joints and how I could simplify the end of the wing a bit to reduce weight and mass in the wing hand. The same day I quickly sketched a new plan from this and decided to start with this new plan for a new wing: it would not be much quicker to be 'changing' the first wing as there would still be a  lot of parts to make new. Because I have to present the project next week I thought it would be a good idea to have the old wing design still in its 'completed' form, to be able to show the comparison with the new plan. I hoped to have the main structure finished this week, but obviously things still always take longer than planned...

So, the new plan:

* change the shoulder joint(s) --> see scale drawing.
* Change elbow joint it to a double ball joint instead of hinge (and obviously still change the direction).
* Simplify the 'hand' of the wing: take one joint out at the end and make the second (now last) part longer (to have space still for all feather rods). Second part requires no extra joints in this way, and so will also be thinner.
* Change design of the single ball joints: have the screw separate from metal plates that 'fill' the gap distance between ball and plates. Or at least, have the metal plates not fully filling the gap: as the screw can not be tightened enough to tighten the joint.
*Don't file away from the rods when trying to create wider range of movement: this will weaken the rods. (I still stupidly made this mistake at some point this week... for a different reason) It is better to file away from the plates.
* Interesting to consider: looking at John Wright's ball joints, there seems to be one kind that has smaller holes as ball sockets, but therefore the balls can be much nearer the edge of the joint, or even sticking out: of course creating a lot of movement possibilities.

Although I have drawn the scale drawing only at the end of the week and used my rough sketches while building, I will share the scale drawing first now, as it will be clearer then my messy drawing... It will also be helpful for myself again while building, as I found this week that during building I got confused about the size of joints, which I think wouldn't have happened if I would have drawn it all out in scale...

(Final....?) new wing design

Even though I would think I would get a bit wiser every time, still I seem to be always doing things wrong first before getting them right... This week I started making the new one ball joints, needed for the shoulders and wrist joint. But, I made all three of them to be used with the small sizes steel balls, while I was planning to use the larger kind for the shoulder joints, which I think is important to have bigger and stronger for these important, much weight carrying joints. At least I still will be able to use the smaller joints for the otherside and possibly for part of the feet. But, now I had to make them again in the bigger variety. This took more time as I had to re-measure everything, etc. I had to file some more metal away after soldering but then put the screw that had been heated up back in again... apparently it had accidentally been annealed, and I messed up the screw head while trying to get it out... but this was also one of my new nicely fitting countersunk screws, so in no other way I could grab it. I tried destroying the screw by drilling through it up to the point where I would be able to take things apart again, but obviously it didn't work and I was destroying the whole joint. Alright... new attempt... In the mean time I figured out that for the other joint I had the holes lined up too closely to the edge and they would be too weak... So actually I should re-make this one as well... Very productive day...  I found luckily that I could re-use another joint made previously (not soldered together yet) for the hip joints, if I would just file away some metal around the screw area. But the other one I would have to re-make entirely.

Another mistake this week was where I tried to solder the rods onto the joints, put this time wanted to file away an area in the joint to have the rod laying in, which I had witnessed on one of Hanna's joints on Monday, but I didn't file away enough. I though it would be ok to file away just a little bit from the rod, but I had to file away more then I thought I would beforehand. It really doesn't look strong enough, I can even bend the metal there a bit too easily... so I think I definitely have to redo that part... For the other joint that would have to have a rod laying in it I could still not get it soldered after several attempts...

I also decided after making the elbow joint (a straightforward two ball joint) that I wanted to make it a bit smaller if possible. Ok, not the most time consuming thing next to the one ball joints, and can still use the larger one for the neck. All in all it didn't really get me up to speed this week though...

All the other parts for the wing are ready to be soldered together. I'm not sure if I will have much time to finish it still before the presentation though...

Lots of joints for the new wing, and lots that will not end up in the new wing.. too...

Final produce of this week, what will end up in the wing

(apart from re-making the rod part for the upper-arm probably...)

The one ball joints on this picture may look like they are still having a lot of metal around the part where the screw goes. I choose to start with longer plates that would cover the screw too, and then file enough away to still be able to tighten the screw enough, and hopefully it also makes the joint a bit stronger.

Finally understanding bird wings - hopefully...

After the first animation test, all the extra bird anatomy study, more action analysis of folding wings and so on I still was puzzled about a very basic element of its structure... I'm not even too sure now what confused me the most, probably just the many angles and twists the wing makes to be folded, that made me overlook some things. In many drawings explaining the bird's skeleton it is visible that the arm is going down in an angle and up again. In the wing itself you don't really see this though. Now, after some more anatomy study I figured out that there is a muscle between the upper and lower arm that makes this invisible, and therefore confusing. Another reason why I couldn't figure out how it worked was that I was convinced about certain angles of things. I designed my wing so that the upper arm can fold backwards so the elbow will be at the back and wrist at the front, as it clearly happens when a bird folds its wings. I thought from here the feathers should keep facing down, although pivoting slightly more backwards as well, especially the primaries. I thought that if the elbow would face downwards and then be shifted backwards to be folded, that it couldn't work because the feathers would be horizontally suddenly. What I forgot to consider though is how every part would be shifted, as well as the body of the bird. The feathers actually have to be turned backwards, and because of how the shoulder joint moves and the body is positioned, everything then fits nicely in its place. This probably all sounds quite confusing and complicated when trying to explain it in text. That is how I felt trying to visualize it for myself, but not being able to fully analyse what was happening from video reference, not sure how to relate this to the anatomical drawings I had, and finally not able to perform the exact actions I could perceive with my armature so far. Until I finally got it after looking at the most simple diagram in a whiteboard animation video on youtube, aimed to explain bird flight understandable for kids.

Diagram how bird wings work. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3So7OMwNgy8

Even though so simple, and many drawings I had seen so far should have explained the same concept, only now it made sense to me. I think possibly because it was the first clear top view showing the muscle and bone structure at once, but finally now I could understand how the wing should fold. I also see now that it probably had confused me from drawing my scale drawings from a front view, which would actually be the bottom of the bird and thinking that from there the wings should fold backwards, while actually it would look like they were folding sideways/up and down from the front, which in flight position would look like back and forwards. Oh well... what is back, side and front for a creature flying freely through the air? Clearly a lesson to define that better for myself next time... Anyway, this time I don't think I will have to re-design the entire wing, but can get away with just changing the direction of the hinge joint be re-soldering, and also adding an extra ball joint at the shoulder joint so it will be able to move more freely in all directions, which is quite important for this joint and I think was too limited with just one single ball joint...

I drew out the new adjustments in a new scale drawing, also incorporating other changes I've made along the way, and some new thoughts about the tail, where I'm now applying a similar mechanism as to the wing feathers. I made some pictures of the scale drawings, hopefully can make a better scan of it soon, but it hopefully makes some things clear for now.

Close up of the new wing design.

Full bird scale drawing - (not ultimate quality image).

The other elements except the adapted wing design which I incorporated in this new scale drawing are the new design for the leg attachment, as how I sketched it roughly some time ago. Also I skipped the k&s at the feet part of the legs. I thought I needed them to be able to separate the feet when casting them separate from the rest of the body, but now realized that I can still easily detach them, as it is just a matter of unscrewing the hinge joint... I changed the fanning mechanism for the tail as mentioned above and changed the direction of the joints for the middle body parts, which I had already figured out before and applied on the armature, but is still shown different in the previous drawing. I also thought again about the positioning and direction of the tail joints and decided that to have the most options with quick twists and bends I should have one joint facing sideways and one the other way around, so I can have both free movement up and down as well as sideways. I also worked out the facial mechanism on here this time, which I had only done roughly from one side before, and the different viewpoints only in a rough sketch. I changed some things from this sketch also, after studying the bird's skull anatomy more. I hope this design will make sense when I start building it... hopefully it will require less versions then the wing... So far it's designed to have an opening beak, also some up and down movement of the upper jaw, movable eyelids, an attachment point for tongue (will be wire in k&s) and then the joint to the neck. Or so is the plan right now at least...

anatomy study - notes to myself

These are just a collection of notes to myself from my further research into birds, and thoughts about them about how to or not to incorporate the knew knowledge into my armature design. Sometimes I get a bit carried away perhaps in details and subtleties which would in case this puppet would be for a specific production with a time/budget/etc. limit, and a certain purpose for the functioning of the puppet, not be necessary to figure out. In this case it was interesting and felt meaningful to learn a bit more about anatomy, to also get a better understanding of what I'm trying to achieve with the armature in general.

* primary feathers separate and turn, but secondary feathers don't.
Do they still pivot as a whole though? I designed my wing's  secondary feathers to be able to move and separate though I knew it would need less movement then the primaries, still it seemed necessary to have them able to move somehow during the folding of the wing. It is hard to exactly analyse it when watching moving birds as it is all so much hidden behind/underneath other feathers, etc.

* During a downstroke feathers overlap in such a way that they provide a firm boundary layer that air can't pass. Then, on the upstroke, feathers separate and the wing turns, so that air is flowing straight in between them. (youtube 'how bird wings work (compared to airplane wings) - smarter every day')
My wing design doesn't allow for real twisting of the feathers, at least, I think I would still be able to get enough of this subtle movement with the end of the feathers which will be wire, if necessary.

* Birds have a light tail (mainly feathers, only very short bone part), which makes that their center of gravity is in between the wings.
This is an interesting fact also to think about for the balance of the puppet... It is quite likely that for my puppet the center of gravity, and so also the puppet's balance, will be nearer the wings then the tail. Originally I had planned the rig attachment points to be nearer the hips, as I thought it would make the rig be less in the way with the flapping wings, and easier to hide. But this fact makes me consider again, if I shouldn't place it nearer the wings, so it works better with the balance of the puppet... Maybe I could attach it near the wings, but then let the rod/metal bar go in angle, leading first along the body more downwards, so the point where the rig will be actually attached can still be in a more convenient place to be out of sight. Perhaps I should just leave this decision to the last moment when I have most of the puppet done and can judge it more easily.

* Birds have a compact and centralized bodyplan around their centre of gravity between the wings. The main flight muscles are located at the body midline on the breastbone (which is why birds have large chests).
I'm just wondering now if I made the chest of my bird wide enough... I couldn't figure out exactly how the proportions work. I think together with the shoulders continuing into the wing parts I will have the right proportions, or something close hopefully. 

* Birds have large eyes, the largest part of the skull is reserved for the eye sockets.
Took this into consideration when designing the skull. I may need to make them slightly smaller in order to have the joint at the top of the head for the moving upper eye brows fit in nicely within the proportions without making the head too big.

* Looking at the chest of birds, their 'pectoral girdle' (part with collar bones and chest plate, but separate from rib cage) 'floats' within muscular support separate from the ribcage, so it can slide back and forth over the surface of the ribcage as the motions of flight demand. (Proctor & Lynch, 1993, manual of ornithology)
I found this to be a quite interesting discovery... Would this mean that I can actually never reproduce the full range of movement a wing/bird shoulder can make with my design so far? Would it mean that to actually achieve this it would be necessary to design some sort of chest structure that can move separately from the backbone/rib cage? Of course, at this point I would also need to reconsider what my actual aims are. Which is not to reproduce the exact anatomy and functioning of a real bird, but to make an animated character. In 9 out of 10 situations these sort of subtleties would definitely not be necessary in the puppet. Although my aims are here to create an accurate moving bird armature, this may be a step to skip, perhaps something to have fun with another time. I couldn't help though to have a little fun working out a possible solution, if my rough sketches make any sense:

* In a bird wing the elbow and wrist are in such a way connected that extending the elbow automatically also extends the wrist... This simplifies the co-ordination for the bird.
And also the co-ordination of the animator moving the bird... Good idea, nature is fascinating... But even more complex to build. I think for now I just need to learn coordinating the bird's wing in the right way when animating, but interesting to know, and perhaps consider such kind of mechanisms for any future armature projects...

* flight feathers are asymmetrical: the leading edge is narrower and less flexible the the trailing edge. This is to avoid twisting and damaging and ensures upward bending of the feather during the downstroke.
You can see this of course when looking at feathers, but good to be reminded of, also as it may help the actual functioning of the feathers as well if I design them like this for the puppet too.

Thinking about fanning mechanisms

For a long time I couldn't figure out the right way to go about the fanning mechanism, so I decided to study my new 'manual of Ornithology' a bit more to find out how it works in the real world...

In real bird anatomy, birds have individual muscles to each individual flight feather, which are pretty intricate and precise and lay on top of each other slightly. The feathers are attached to the 'postpotagium', which is a tough band of 'tendinous tissue' from the elbow to the wing tip. This postpotagium forms the leading edge of the wing and with its elastic strength 'keeps the flight feathers properly aligned and firmly attached to the wing skeleton.' (Proctor & Lynch, 1993).

I got a bit confused actually if the feathers are actually directly attached to the bones or if they are only held by this muscle structure. If I'm right they're still attached to the bones, but mostly held in place by the tendinous elastic structure. This is quite interesting, as so far I have been mainly considering moving mechanisms within the 'rigid' armature parts I have been making, while I had already been given the advice earlier to also consider the properties of soft materials having a role in the moving and functioning of the armature. I was considering to link up the feathers with metal rods, as I thought it would provide both a pull effect when opening the feathers, and push effect when closing the feathers. But, being rigid material it would have caused problems where the wing should fold, and also make the movement of the wing be quite limiting.
I did a test using stretchy fabric, quite crude for now, but the principle seems to work. I sewed it just around the feather rods, but when I get some holes in them I could fix it more to one place. I think I should try it with bandage instead of the legging stuff I used. Ideally something that is strong and a bit stiff, but still flexible enough... If I can find the right material I think it would work quite nicely... I will have to work out the right spacing between the feathers (which will be easier to judge when I've put the final extended feathers on) and then make sure the fabric can stretch the right amount so the feathers can open and close as far as they should and not further.

Fabric test for fan mechanism

First animation test with new wing!

First time animating the new wing! I really need to get back into practice. It is pretty messy and I know I can do much better. But as much as it is the first time I've made ball and socket joints, it is also the first time animating with them. I'm happy with the folding movement so far, and need to pay more attention to all details next time. Also need to improve the setup in my room as I was looking at the screen from a distance, which didn't help in noticing all little details. Most important to study some moving birds again and prepare before animating with some sort of dope sheet or at least good notes for myself. I noticed when working on our 'fowl play' stop motion short earlier this year what a world of difference this can make...

Definitely want to get the fanning mechanism in place soon as well, and maybe already attach some primary & secondary feathers to the rods for the next test. If I can get my screen closer to my work and do some preparation before the next effort, then hopefully there will be lots of improvement.

One other thing I noticed during animating is that I will have to be really careful handling the shoulder joint. It is important that this joint is tight, as otherwise it can't hold the weight of the whole wing. But at the same time it need to be possible to animate it smoothly, as a small movement at the side of the shoulder will mean a large movement at the tip of the wing. So I need to be able to make really small and precise movements with the shoulder joint... Best I can do now I think is using two hands and grip the chest part firmly when moving the joint carefully.

building week 7 - completing new wing and middle body part

A week of encountering many problems again, and finding solutions for most of them... Meaning in some cases re-designing part of my new wing design again, and changing back to some part of the old design.

While I was working on the first joint for the 'hand' of the wing I realized another couple of mistakes I had made. I had designed the attachment for the ball joint plate + pivoting feathers both at the front (see scale drawing some posts back) with the idea that it would allow the joint to be a bit thinner as a whole. However, at the same time it would get in the way when turning for the folding of the wing. Another mistake was that I had made the lower part for the pivoting feathers sticking out at the side. It made sense when I designed it first, but now I noticed it would really affect how much the joints could be turned. I re-designed it making it square again, but slightly longer at the ball joint side, slightly shorter at the pivoting joint side.
I tried to find a way to solve the problem of the clamp part being in the way at the front, and after thinking of two complex solutions decided that it would be fine to have that part at the back. This would make the whole joint a bit thicker as it would have things sticking out at two sides, but solving a lot of problems too, so worth that sacrifice.

Changing the joints, early design in progress at top,

finished joints with changes below.

Silver soldering still is something I need more practice in clearly. I had plenty of opportunities this week, and still been getting it wrong plenty of times. Expensive practice... but hopefully I'll get better at it soon. Also a time consuming practice, as every time getting it wrong means cooling down, cleaning up and setting up the parts again in the right position with flux and solder, etc. and if it goes wrong again doing all that again, and again, and...

Then I found another major mistake in the design. I had already made the ball and socket joint between the upper and lower arm (elbow) and soldered it all together, then went testing its movements. I had deliberately changed this joint as I thought the hinge joint was too limited in its movement. I was really puzzled about this for a while, even wondering if birds maybe had some different type of more flexible joint here. A silly thought really, but I thought at least it 'wouldn't harm' having some more moving possibilities. I thought the turning around of the elbow would make things easier, as it looks when turning around your arm as if something in your elbow is moving too. Duh! It's the skin that is moving of course, not the bones... What I thought would give more flexibility was actually limiting the joint more now, as the ball and socket joint would not allow to be folded entirely. I was still believing that I could adapt it a bit for a while, but actually messed it up only more in that way. I was trying to file parts away to allow more movement, but I soon realized that it was just not going to work. I remembered now that I had not been able to fully judge the movement of the old wing design as there was no shoulder attached then. Even though I knew this then, it must have been because of this that I got confused and made the mistake. Now it meant I had to remake this part and make it into a hinge joint again.

Trying to 'fix' the ball joint mistake, then changing it to a hinge joint.

The next day I continued working on the hinge joint and also re-made the upper arm plate. I had to re-melt the silver solder to use some parts again, and get them soldered to the new parts again. This day brought a lot of frustrations as the soldering kept going wrong. I could find no other way to get everything soldered then using a lot of clay near to the part I was soldering, even directly underneath it. This meant a lot of exploding clay and bits of dried clay flying onto the surface I was trying to solder. I almost lost hope when somewhere in the middle of a complete mess of clay, flux and black surface suddenly it had worked, against all my expectations. Not much later it actually seemed like the wing was coming together!

Top to bottom: setting up for soldering (one of many attempts),

The finally finished and roughly cleaned up part,

upper and lower together.

I was carefully checking all the movement of the wing this time before moving on, but this time all seemed to work fine... I continued making all the feather rods. The next thing is to find a good solution for the fanning mechanism, but other then that the wing is complete.

Testing the folding movement with the parts finished so far.

The finished wing, folded.

The finished wing, spread out.

Now, there is not much time to celebrate the success as there is not much time left before the break to get more of the body parts done so I wanted to get most out of the time I still had.
I had most parts for the middle part of the body ready to be soldered together, so I hoped to have a bit more success with soldering this time and get more done. Of course it took long again. I had noticed that the joint plates of the joint connecting the two wings was already slightly bent, or at least it looked like that. I thought it would be a good idea anyway to avoid this getting worse and make this part as strong as possible as it would be an important central part of the puppet, having to carry a lot of weight from all the connected limbs. So I decided to 'fill up' some of the gaps with metal plates, which of course was easier said then done. I had a lot of problems this time trying to solder the plates together, as I needed to clamp them together with the screw while soldering, but at the same time didn't want them to be soldered entirely together. I would still have to be able to open the joint. This meant that I had to be really careful about where the solder could flow. In most cases though the solder stayed too much at the solder and the bond wasn't strong enough. I tried soldering both side, but keeping the opening at the same place... It was really fiddly, and while trying to solder one of the hip joints the solder did indeed suddenly flow too far. I wasn't even able to loosen the screw, and then I 'screwed up' it's allen key hole by trying, so there is no way anymore now the get it out. I could try it by re-melting everything. But for now I gave up and concentrated on getting at least the chest part finished as far as possible and solder two ball bearings on the connecting part for the chest and hip part. I had it just about done except some filing and re-drilling still has to be done to have the ball bearing from the wing shoulder attachment fit in, but I can do that later at home.

Friday work, messing about with the chest part for a long time, finally soldered at right.

building week 6 - starting the new wing

I finished the designing of the new wing over monday/tuesday as I could only access the fabrication centre again from Wednesday. So a short week for building, but nonetheless I got quite some things done.

First I continued the middle body part, trying to solder the parts together that I made the week before. That was quite a challenge... As I wanted to have the two parts for the chest to be attached in a cross shape, I needed to find a way to keep them in that shape while soldering, with the bit to connect the two staying in place as well, and then get the solder flowing in the right place without everything shifting around again... I tried to secure everything with clay again, which worked ok, but of course the longer it takes the more the clay is going to burst and shift things around again. Also because it was hard to really line up the little bit that I used to join up the two parts and make it a tight fit. It was standing quite loose, causing the silver solder to easily flow around it without connecting with both sides. As it was so small and I needed the silver solder to flow all around it I couldn't really use anything to hold it. I just had to make many efforts before getting it right, and then when it finally was stuck together it had shifted around still and the parts were not crossing entirely in the middle... I'll leave it for another time for now...

Another challenge this week was drilling through tiny bits... I needed some one side ball joints, which meant that I would have to fill up the side where the screw went through with metal, enough to avoid it from bending out at the other side, but still not too thick to not being able to clamp the ball tightly... I cut off squares of 6 by 4 mm... and tried drilling a hole of 2mm in the centre... the main challenge was clamping it. I managed to clamp it between the wooden plates in the vice under the pillar drill, which made a deep dent into the wood, so only just about the spot that I had to drill through was still visible. It looked pretty ridiculous having this teeny tiny thing clamped tightly under this enormous machine...

Below some images of the rest of the work I got done this week. I used welding rod for the individual feathers for this design, of which I hammered most part flat. The flat part will have holes drilled through it for connecting them with a fanning mechanism and for connecting the wire that will extend the flexible part of the feathers. Or so is the plan at least... To be continued next week. The last week before a two week break in which I can't access the fabrication centre, so hopefully I can get enough done to have at least the wing and hopefully a little bit more to test animate over the break...

testing and re-designing the wing

I used the days I couldn't be in the fabrication centre over Easter to test animate and re-design the wing.

I only did a very short animation test. I had already noticed that I wouldn't be able to fold this wing in the way I initially planned and had researched it should fold up. I did actually do a really quick animation in between moving house where I animated without any framegrabber software but I can not share it right now as I have some problems with my editing software. It wasn't very good anyway, but I will post it here still when I can. Below is a little flapping motion test. I also need to still research and analyze the motion better for the next test, but also I need some time to get used to the armature. Some findings during animating:

* I din't have the shoulder joint attached yet to this wing. This is of course affecting how I can animate it, as normally a lot of movement would come from the shoulder joint, so in that way my animation already can not be fully correct anyway, which is a shame for testing the wing properly, unfortunately.

* The feathers at the 'hand' part of the wing should already be pointed more sideways in their natural position. Now some of them are not able to move as far as they should when spreading the wing out.

* The hand part can't fold under the lower arm as it should. It will need another joint to be able to do this.

* The metal bars for feathers should probably actually be longer at the upper arm and shorter at the lower arm (being the more solid part of the feather, at the end of the wing - even though they are also longer - they will need to be more flexible). I may have to look again at more wings in movement to check how far certain parts of the wing can and do bend.

* I will have to think more about a fanning mechanism for the feathers, where they can layer on top of each other and also follow each other when moving one.

After testing the wing I was really convinced that I wanted to re-design the wing. So I set down to go back to sketching, drawing and prototyping stage again. The pictures below show first the development trying to sketch out different ideas and putting them together, then the second picture is a quick prototype using wood and brass rods testing the main concept without clamping plates.

I remembered the idea with using rods instead of the metal strips I had been using from a discussion way back with Arril. He suggested that and even possibly using wood as a simpler method for the feather mechanism. I was doubting about that idea then as I was not worried that I would not be able to control the tension of the feathers and that they would move to easily just by touching, also when I don't want them to during animating. But this time I realized that this method would have another benefit: when using the rods, this would mean they would not get into each others way when pivoting and therefore also they would be able to overlap more like feathers in a real wing do. So, I quickly tested the concept as Arril had mentioned it with wood and brass rods and it moved nicely and smooth indeed, the wood provided some natural friction as well so they weren't fitting in too loosely, but still I wasn't convinced about not being able to adjust the tension and make them tighter when necessary. So I transferred my idea of a clamping mechanism as used for the first wing to this new idea. I was still considering first if I could be using wood, but then rejected this idea as I thought it would be mostly complicating things when having to combine materials. I would still need to use metal for the ball and socket joints anyway. Also, using wood would mean I would need probably thicker parts for it to be strong enough, and even though lighter then metal, metal would still allow me to work with thinner/smaller parts. So I decided to use metal, and make a clamping mechanism for the rods, which would have to be on the sides of the rod as they would come from the top. I also re-used the idea of a leather strip, which would have two purposes now: to avoid damaging the rods, but also again to even out the friction where I would not succeed in exact precision for the positioning of the rods.

Developing new ideas.

Below is the 'final' scale drawing of the new design for the wing.

New design for the wing.

It took me some frustration and more research into bird wings again before coming to a possible solution. Bird wings are still such complicated things! I'm still not sure if I fully understand their anatomy and how they work. I decided to order a book on bird anatomy as the sources I could find on bird anatomy and especially wing anatomy were quite limited. I should have a copy of the 'Manual of Ornithology - Avian Structure & Function' (N.S. Proctor & P.J. Lynch) by the end of this week...

Building week 5 - a short week...

This week for building went really quick. I was a bit distracted from the work as I had to move out my house by Wednesday morning and still had not found a place to live on Monday. So I took Monday off for finding a place and left a bit earlier on Tuesday to move all my stuff that night.
Tuesday I mainly cleaned up the armature further, cutting off the screws shorter and then started with the parts for the middle body part (chest, hips, etc. access points for shoulders, neck, legs, tail). After briefly talking to Arril on friday about the wing finished so far and testing and reviewing it myself (no proper animation test yet, as I had been occupied with finding a house) I knew that I was actually not satisfied enough with this wing. It still has a lot of issues and can not do all the movements I initially intended for it to do. I felt I needed to let it rest for a bit and have another look at it over Easter and then decide whether I could improve the existing design or would want to make an entire new design.

 So the two days that were left (Friday was bank holiday) I worked on the middle body parts. I thought it would be a good idea after the new experience so far building the wing and noticing problems after building, to review the scale drawing once more and see if I could spot any more problems beforehand this time. Indeed, I did find another problem. Looking at my design for the hip joints I saw that the angle wouldn't be right. I had designed the hip block to be straight with the legs sticking out at the sides. This would mean that when in flying position the legs can point down easily as well, but moving back and forward would be limited using this positioning. If I would turn the joint a quarter I would get better back and forward movement, but the legs wouldn't be able to point down entirely.*

So I quickly sketched a new idea, which was to use a single bar of metal that is bent at both sides, and have single ball joints attached from here, so they can be positioned in a more ideal angle to allow for the movement they need to be able to make. If the drawing makes it any clearer...

quick sketch

The work of this week + the wing

*edit: Now later I'm noticing that I overlooked a much simpler solution for this. As I could just have the rod that is sticking out as upper leg bone to be bent in an angle at the top, in which way it can still benefit from the full turning around that is possible with the ball joint without the joint plates getting in the way...

Building week 4 - first wing finished

Over the weekend I tried the suggestion with the leather strip to even out the friction over all the separate pivoting feathers. I'm quite happy with how it works.

Then, the rest of the week I spent filing things down, rounding off edges, and assembling the new hinge joint for the upper arm/elbow. A lot of silver soldering this week, as so far all parts had still been loose and only attached where been held by screws. I had to silver solder all the pins in the lower arm part and in the other joints as well. This took some practice.

Still needing some more practice...

Some improvement, most pins are fixed now.

It was quite a tedious work: cutting really tiny bits of silver solder to fit in the tiny holes where the pin was pushed halfway through the hole, and let it flow in there exactly to make a bond between the pin and the plate. You can see I had some problems with this in the beginning... I tried after the first efforts if it would work better making longer pins and actually have them sticking out so I could have the silver solder fitting around it instead of just on top, giving more surface area for the bond. But this proved to be only more difficult to get right, so I went back to the first method, which I got working in the end.

Me silver soldering.

I mainly still used the brazing torch for the silver soldering. I tried using the smaller Dremel torch that gets less hot, but because I was often using clay to hold things in place it seemed like this was taking away some of the heat, for which reason I could not get it hot enough with this tool. I could point the Dremel torch on the piece as long and close as I wanted, but just simply nothing would happen... With the brazing torch it is easy to get it too hot, but I just tried to be careful, not pointing it directly onto the piece for too long.

Applying flux where the pins have to be soldered in the holes.

On the picture above you can see the first of the 'finger' joints of the wing. I used clay so I could have the pins in place while soldering. I didn't do this with the part for the lower arm and it turned out that some pins were slightly shifted. This made it impossible to have both parts fitting together. In the end I could solve the problem by making the holes from the plate they had to fit into slightly bigger. This wasn't ideal though, so therefore I decided to do it differently for the other parts and this worked out well. It is not easy working with clay to hold parts, as of course it dries out quickly and in some cases then bursts and flies in all directions (extra reason why it's a good idea to wear safety goggles...). I just had to hope every time that it would hold long enough to allow me to solder the parts together. I couldn't find any other way to hold the pieces together in this small scale. Sometimes it caused the whole thing to get quite messy, as all the clay bits would get onto the part I was soldering... Not the ideal method clearly, but so far it seems to work out.

More soldering after this. The hinge joint had to be soldered together and the balls had to be soldered onto the rods. Even though I had been warned that soldering ball bearings onto rods can be tricky, I found this to be quite easy compared to all the tricky bits of soldering I had been facing so far.

Hinge joint being soldered.

Soldering the ball onto the rod. Finished/cleaned up one in the background.

Picture above shows the soldering of ball bearings onto the rod. I used the method Mary gave me advice on weeks ago: making a circle of silver solder to fit around the rod and let that flow into the hole. Ryan gave me a short demonstration the first time and it all worked out quite well. This was one of the things I preferred to use the smaller Dremel torch for, as it gave me more control over the small thing and allowed me to watch it being closer. Because there was not clay or other complicated constructions to hold the parts together I could get it hot enough with this smaller flame. When possible I choose to solder the ball onto the full length of the rod and then cut it off, so I could just hold the rod or even let it rest against a brick while soldering (but holding it allowed me to turn it around while soldering, making it easier to heat up all sides evenly.

Pretty much all parts are there to be put together now... Just connecting the different joints now where they have to be soldered together...

And there is the result of the first wing, finished on friday... Yay :)

Scale drawings

I finally made some pictures of the scale drawings I made. I put them under the line tester with my own camera. It is not ideal quality yet, but gives a better overview then the bits and close ups covered with stuff so far in the pictures. So here they are.

First effort, mainly to figure out the lay out. I had no idea here yet about how exactly to place the holes, how wide to make the joints, etc. so sketched it all just roughly

Next attempt, more accurately, but still some parts I was unclear about, like the shoulder and elbow joint, some other attachment places, and also changed the direction some joints should be facing to get the right range of movement later.

Tried to think through the skinning of the puppet already to some extent, to hopefully avoid facing problems when getting to this stage. Tried to think of where I could logically make access points to get into the skin with Allen keys and just generally how all parts could be connected and skinned and what to consider for this while working on the armature.

This is the more 'final' version of the scale drawing which I used a lot during building. More things have changed already while building, and more will continue to change probably. I'm still using this drawing as a general guide though. I may make a new one with more of the later adjustments at some point.

3rd building week - starting to see results!

Finally things are starting to come together this week... I'm starting to get more familiar with the machines and tools and methods of doings things. Putting together the first ball and socket joint, it works quite nicely already! (no rods soldered in yet, parts not cleaned up filed down yet, but still...) I have been working on all the different parts: drilling, cutting, sanding down and cutting tiny pins for my pivoting feather joints. Only found that the tapped holes for were slightly slanted, which makes that the plates don't fit accurately anymore... I was hoping to 'fix' this by making the bigger leading holes a bit wider, but noticed that the difference was too big... I had to remake the part and tap the threaded holes more straight this time.

I found another problem in the design of the wing joints this week as well. I had designed the end joint at the tip of the wing to have a ball joint at one point, with then a plate for the pivoting feather joints going in a corner/rounded edge around it. I found that I was actually over-complicating things unnecessarily here. Of course a joint with a ball on one side and a screw on the other side won't work... the tension of the screw on one side makes the plates to be opening on the other side and not spreading the tension equally. Filling up the gap at the screw side with metal could be a way to reduce this, but would just be a lot of extra work in this case. I could as well just make it a double ball joint and have the last feather - which would be quite an important leading feather anyway - attached to the rod coming from the ball joint. In this way it even increases the range of movement possible with this leading feather and make the design more straight forward...

All parts finished so far, still with the old design for the joint at the tip of the wing.

quickly sketching the new solution.

Next issue. I thought it would be a good idea to make the two plates together first including holes etc. and then cut the top clamping plate in half, to separate the ball joint and pivoting joint part. I found out that it was hard to saw through them neatly, and I was cutting away more then I wanted. So I decided to make the top plates again but now as separate strips, and line them up with the bottom one (I just drilled the middle hole first, to fit the screw through, so that I could clamp them together and then file away where not straight and drill the holes for the ball bearing sockets using the existing holes in the other plate as a guide).

Trying to saw through the plate, then deciding to make new strips.

New strips screwed to the bottom plate, before drilling the other holes through.

Some of this week's work.

I got as far as to putting most parts for the individual joints together. I got the pivoting joints for the individual feathers clamped between the plates. I already had some fear that these would still be giving issues. I would have had to work really neat and precise to get everything really straight and of equal thicknesses in order to have it all working smoothly. Indeed some of the metal strips were looser then others. When talking with Mary on friday she had the suggestion to try adding some sort of fabric/leather strip in between to see if this could help getting more equal friction for all of the metal strips.  I also found out after testing with the first strips that I would have to file away quite a lot at the top around the hole fitting on the pin in order for the strips to move far enough sideways and not get in the way of each other. Still much to improve...

Assembling the lower arm part.

All the parts together so far.

Building week 2 - more mistakes and problem solving

Second week of building was a slow start, as on monday morning I was still travelling back from the Netherlands. I thought then that it could be a good idea to use photoshop to draw some accurate measurements for cutting and drilling the plates, but then I rejected the idea as my lack of experience with photoshop made that it would take me longer just figuring out how to do that effectively that I thought I could as well spend that time drawing it by hand. Tuesday after visual culture I started my first effort at making a hinge joint (for the 'elbow' of the wing). I brazed the parts together but then found out that probably I had heated up the metal too much and softened it. I couldn't get it all as nice and straight lined up as I wanted. I learned that I would have to find better methods of keeping everything in place while brazing. The principle of the joint worked, which is simple enough of course, but clearly it could still be improved a lot... Also I found that I should have left the gap in between the two sandwiching plates longer, so the moving joint part can move in entirely, allowing the wing to fully fold in at this part. The joint was also already getting quite heavy on its own, and remembering the advice about limiting the weight I decided I didn't need the joint to be as wide as this one and made the next effort a bit narrower. This next time I thought it would be good to go for silver soldering instead of brazing, but the stores at the university did not sell the white flux to go with the silver solder so I still had to order this (only later I would find out that it was actually available in the metal centre itself. I thought they only had the blue brazing flux. Anyway...).
More mistakes and learning on wednesday... I had researched on annealing the type of steel of the stainless teel ball bearings and found that I would have to heat it up to 1100 degrees Celsius. I tried this with the enamel ovens in the casting department. The display went black just before reaching the temperature... probably had gone too hot (luckily later it worked again and I hadn't ruined the oven...). I talked with Paul and he could tell me more about annealing and why the methods tried so far didn't work... The process has to be a bit more technical and the metal has to go through a specific cycle of heating up, holding temperature and cooling down in order for it to work right. I hadn't been able to find very specific temperature requirements for the annealing for this specific type of metal so we only had approximate heating and cooling down temperatures. This time used an oven in ceramics which could set a timer overnight. Also, the ball bearings would have to be buried in sand for the heat to be spread equally. So next step was to make a box for the ball bearings to put the sand in to put them in the oven, so I could soften them, to drill them in my tool, to... I can understand why many people rather try to find pre-drilled ball bearings. The only ones I could find were rather expensive. Well, maybe if I can develop a succesful method I should just make loads of them and sell them myself, not such a bad idea...
Anyway, another silly mistake: I accidentally picked up a scrap piece of aluminium instead of steel to drill nice rounds for the bottom and lid of the box. Ok, now I have two nice but useless circles of aluminium... In the end Paul helped with making the box and I continued trying to measure, cut and drill some parts for the wing joints. Still struggling to find a way of doing it accurately. Either needing better tools or just more practice?

Trying to measure things accurately...

More problems to be solved. Keeping plates clamped together that have to be drilled through together, getting strips of metal that have bend while cutting or while separating during drilling (by mistake) straight again... Hopefully at some point more problems will be solved then new ones created so I can actually produce something that functions. At least I'm learning.
Thursday were presentations of the work done so far, which took all day. Friday I could finally get the ball bearings out of their box and see how they'd done. They were still pretty hard to drill through, so could have been better. But at least it was possible now. Just takes some patience.
I made a new attempt measuring up the plates and lining up the holes more precise then in my previous attempt. I made my first attempt at tapping a threaded hole and tapped some more holes over the weekend.

 Drilling

Work so far, drilling tools, not so successful attempts...

And the - not so successful yet - first attempt at making a hinge joint.