>>25798 >Leather gloves Actually an ingenious idea for a hand covering. MaSiRo and MaidCom use cloth gloves but, leather is a better idea.

>>25801 LOL. tldr?

>>25804 Yeah, I sometimes prefer summaries, if I don't know if the text is currently relevant to me but I want to know what it is about, and when I have the summary I can post it as well. Don't let this discourage you, thanks for sharing your ideas.

>>25802 >MaSiRo and MaidCom use cloth gloves Maybe that's why their meido has to use both hands to support a soft-drink can? Or the arms are not strong enough to use only one, or maybe both.

>>25872 I think even just the little rubberized 'thimble' fingertip covers you can get at a stationary store would go a long way towards affording a robowaifu's hands a better grip.

Anyone try this? https://www.smooth-on.com/product-line/soma-foama/

>>25916 I've been involved with Smooth-On products before, but not sure about this specific mixture Anon. I may venture that they are all primo quality, but highly-expensive. In their case however, at this point in time at least, I'd say you get what you pay for.

>Since silicon nitride ball bearings are harder than metal, this reduces contact with the bearing track. This results in 80% less friction, three to ten times longer lifetime, 80% higher speed, 60% less weight, the ability to operate with lubrication starvation, higher corrosion resistance and higher operation temperature, as compared to traditional metal bearings.[27] Silicon nitride balls weigh 79% less than tungsten carbide balls. Silicon nitride ball bearings can be found in high end automotive bearings, industrial bearings, wind turbines, motorsports, bicycles, rollerblades and skateboards. Silicon nitride bearings are especially useful in applications where corrosion or electric or magnetic fields prohibit the use of metals, for example, in tidal flow meters, where seawater attack is a problem, or in electric field seekers. It might also be interesting in other areas related to robowaifus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_nitride

Does the boobs go here? Imagine not having a dedicated thread to one of the most important parts of the robot lol

>>154 Why not alginate hydrogel? It's soft and fleshy enough, water absorbent and also anti-microbial

>>28119 Neat! I wonder if it's particularly difficult/expensive to manufacture? >>28140 >Does the boobs go here? No, we have a lewds-containment thread, the Vagoo thread : (>>419), for such things. Please keep things explicitly robowaifu-related, and spoilered. >>28184 >alginate hydrogel? Wow that's some really fascinating material, Anon. Do you think it's suited to DIY manufacture, and if so have any protips for us about it? Cheers. :^)

>>28186 >Do you think it's suited to DIY manufacture, and if so have any protips for us about it? Hello again, Chobi. The materials needed for its manufacture are available for DIYing it. As for color and pigmentation, i think having a tattoo gun type of device would be suitable for giving it more of a human like color as opposed to something like air brushed paint so that the transparent hydrogel can look like skin and so that it'll take on a lighter tone when certain parts of the material are stretched along parts of the body that actuate or have thinner areas of skin. I'm of the belief that we should go the soft robotics route so we can make them as human like as possible. Anyways, here's a video of some guy making the hydrogel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sz0KkT603E He has other videos he made where he makes a bunch of other stretchable materials.

>>28187 its like ballistic gel

>>28189 Sorta, yeah. Except when you jizz inside of it, it'll absorb the water content while it kills whatever germs you gave it

>>28187 Good to see you again, Anon. >an actual lab tho I'm curious about the safety issues with the materials involved? I'm too ignorant of Chemistry to know if the ingredients/admixtures of them, are toxic or otherwise deleterious to humans. Wonder what the material's costs are, and the accessibility of them by common anons like me? As to the manufacturing process, it appears to be simplicity itself. And apart from the technical stirrer/hotplate equipment, nothing special was required by way of tools either. Even a common disposable styrofoam plate (apparently at room temperature) was used as the curing bed lol. >I'm of the belief that we should go the soft robotics route so we can make them as human like as possible. That certainly is a very-desirable characteristic of great robowaifus IMO. However, we here as engineers need to keep the mechanics of the laws of physics always in mind. The >tl;dr is that mass is central to everything we do here (>>4313). Since this material is hydrophilic, I anticipate that it will have roughly the density of water (which is quite heavy, relative to our concerns here). OTOH, since it can be readily useful in thin-films/sheets, we could probably very conveniently use the stuff as a type of skin over our robowaifu's shell substrates. I note that the researchers were typically using rubber gloves to handle this material, and that it often had a sheen reminiscent of being wet/damp. I wonder what this hydrogel feels like to the touch, and if it could in any way be made to be as comforting as normal human skin under normal conditions at home? Regardless, very cool idea Anon. Thanks for the information! Cheers. :^) >=== -sp, prose edit

>>28191 >I'm too ignorant of Chemistry to know if the ingredients/admixtures of them, are toxic or otherwise deleterious to humans. As afar as ai know, it's used in medical applications like skin repair and drug delivery systems, so i think it's completely non-toxic as far as i know.

>>28119 >silicon nitride ball bearings I had an idea and I don't think for our purposes it can be beat for bearings. Bearing with balls in them or rollers will ALWAYS have friction problems. The simple reason is you have a outer race of one circumference and the inner circumference of different, smaller, measurements. So one side or the other as it's rotating HAS to slip. To overcome this problem they make the balls small and super hard to have as little contact as possible. If you large wide rollers, which require less strong material, then you will have a high friction bearing. So how do we get around this. There's a guy who has a patent on a bearing he calls Rolamites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolamite and scroller wheels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollerwheel He simply makes two rollers between the races. These are sized such that each one only moves the exact same speed while rolling. For the linear Rolamite they say the friction is an order of magnitude lower. That's a huge amount. Now I think that it's possible to use the same principles but use the advantages that we now have with 3D printing. On this site and elsewhere we see cycloid drives for gears. The advantages of these are a large area for the gear to press on. As shown here, >>16709 I also see Planetary Transmissions that can be used as bearings "if" you hold the center gear stationary. Like here, >>17030 Now combine the two, cycloidal gears with a broad surface and the planetary system where the gears rotate all at the same speed like the Rolomite. Then you have low friction with large surface area. This means we can use less strong and easier to process materials. Like plastics. And WAY cheaper. Many plastics are stronger than steel per weight but they need a larger surface area to not be dented. This won't work with regular ball bearing because of the difference in race sizes causing friction but with a geared system we can make large, high surface area bearings with low friction. And we can cast these easily in complicated shapes due to the easy prototyping of 3D printing. There's one more advantage I see that I've never heard anyone else talk about. Even and long lasting wear. I know this long but to explain it takes time. There's a way to get next to perfectly smooth flat surfaces. They do this with surface plates. You have three plates all alike. You rub two together, One will become convex and one concave. You then rub the third plate on the others. You can see that if the third is convex and the others concave or convex by swapping the rubbing back and forth between the three plates eventually all will become flat because each surface will be different and each will rub down the irregularities of the others. You can get atomic sized flats from this. I believe that you can get much the same out of these cycloid planetary gear systems. The outer race, the inner gears and the inner race are very similar to the three surface plates. If you choose the gear ratios such that it takes a good while for the meeting points to line up the whole will revolve a lot of times before they line up exactly the same. As they revolve any friction will wear down only those areas not perfectly aligned to meet up. In essence the gear will get better and better as it revolves. If the gears are all slanted a bit towards the center a simple tighten, just like tightening the bearing on a car wheel, will take up all slack for any wear. The gears would last a really long time with minimal friction. You could also not use any sort of grease. In fact it would be better not to as grease attracts dirt and captures it. This bearing only needs cleaning with water to remove any dust or other particles.

>>28192 >so i think it's completely non-toxic as far as i know. Yes, makes sense. We've discussed biocomputing for our robowaifus here before (>>2184). I wonder if such gels might be feasible for such efforts? Say, contained inside semi/sealed glass vessels for the biomolecules to lay down upon? >>28200 >You can get atomic sized flats from this. Wow that's really fascinating, Grommet. Thank you. Do you think that even materials like PLA filament might wear down in such a fashion over time to become ultra-smooth like this? >=== -add'l resp

>>28209 >I wonder if such gels might be feasible for such efforts? Say, contained inside semi/sealed glass vessels for the biomolecules to lay down upon? Funny thing, that's currently being researched right now using alginate hydrogel. I'm moreso focused on making hardware centered around parallelism because i think it would be much less messy (and disgusting) than working with brain tissue samples.

I know the doll board has been referenced before, so at the risk of beating a dead horse, an ideal cottage industry minimum viable [s]waifu[/s] product sounds like it would be a scaled up 3d printed jointed doll like Polaris or something. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3184441 Parts would be kinda big so maybe a high-volume printer like and Ender3NeoMax. Could even print it in flexible filament if you're feeling fancy but you'd need a direct drive 3d printer rather than a bowden and other than the Sovol (which can be kinda hinky) idk. Maybe give put a layer of furniture foam over the 3d print (and since the structure will be hidden you won't have to worry about consistent color except maybe the face) then a rubber "cosplay bodysuit" (fully body rubber suits auto-gynophiles wear). Of course my jam is more the robotic aspect but just an idea.

>>28209 >Do you think that even materials like PLA filament might wear down in such a fashion over time to become ultra-smooth like this I'm not positive about this but it does logically follow. (Sometimes logic doesn't work though in fact). Some of it would depend on the "gumminess" of the material. If it picked up pieces and smeared them instead of wearing or packing down, might not work. I do believe this would not be the case but can't tell as it hasn't been done. The self generated accuracy due to even wear, depends on how the ratio of gears lines up. "IF" they have a very long period before they align up to the same outer race gear, inner gear and inner race gear then you can see that all the gears would almost equally wear on each other. If one spot was high some other spot low, they would over time wear each other the exact same. As they are all rotating and each tooth is being rubbed by all the other teeth I think we have the same effect as the surface plate where the average profile is enforced and they wear equally. Over time they would become more and more accurate. The wear would create a slight space or slack which could be easily taken up the same as wheel bearing slack in a car wheel is. Tighten a little to take up the slack. What's important is you can use less strong materials BUT spread the force over a larger space, WITHOUT creating point source loads like normal ball bearings are. Normal bearing MUST be hard because they need small areas to keep from adding large friction as noted above. You side step that with large hypercycloid gears.

>>4330 >>21161 >Cut-resistant performance of Kevlar and UHMWPE covered yarn fabrics with different structures >Kevlar fiber and UHMWPE fiber https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00405000.2021.1933327 >Kevlar fiber and UHMWPE fiber are widely used in stab-resistant materials at home and abroad. Researches focus on the selection of a single fiber as raw material, but rarely combine the two high-performance fibers for the fabrication of stab-resistant fabrics. Kevlar fiber and UHMWPE fiber were utilized to prepare twelve kinds of covered yarns with different structures in this paper. Tensile performance of the covered yarns and cut-resistant performance of the covered yarn fabrics were tested, respectively. The results show that tensile performance of the covered yarns is better than pure Kevlar or UHMWPE yarns with same linear density. Tensile performance of the covered yarns decreases with the increase of twists, and the covered yarns show different failure modes with different twists. The cut-resistant performance of covered yarn fabrics are better than that of pure Kevlar or UHMWPE fabrics; and the cut-resistant effect with Kevlar fibers wrapping around the core fibers is superior than that with UHMWPE fibers. The cut-resistant performance of the covered yarn fabrics decreases with the increase of twists of the covered yarns. For the same kind of covered yarn structures, there is a positive correlation between cut-resistant performance of the covered yarn fabrics and tensile strength of the covered yarns. However, no correlation is observed for different covered yarn structures. The results lay a theoretical foundation for the structural optimum of cut-resistant and stab-resistant clothing. Topic via Pete Blank Discord

>>4330 >As a skin for areas that are less likely to be seen or felt synthetic fabrics could save on cost, as the alternative is silicone I'm not buying that. Silicone is gross and sticky. It feels awful. Go and rub on a microfiber sheet. It's like silk. A spandex microfiber mix would likely be the best we could do without going to some sort of silk or super expensive wool. Neither of which would wear anywhere near as good as the synthetics.

>>3058 More on mycelium use cases and background information, especially in regards to flexible materials including something like leather: https://youtu.be/cApVVuuqLFY https://youtu.be/oe3Vwnnp-VA There are plenty of more videos.

MyCera is an interesting material made from sawdust, clay, and mycelium. The mycelium grows on the sawdust and binds the clay together. While we probably won't be using MyCera for robowaifus the idea of using mycelium as binding agent is kind of interesting. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RMdPgJJPOew&pp=ygUGTXljZXJh

>>28878 >printed fungi supporting structures I moved my answer on this to R&D general here >>28907, in case it starts a longer conversation about how to use this. Though, it would also fit into cyborg general since this is used for most biology related topics.

>>28908 We can remove this post for you if you'd like, Noido Dev.

>>29394 >>29414 >>29422 >>29423 Thinking about the idea of silicone body-part sleeves from doll manufacturers discussed in the crosslinks, I realized that many robowaifu builders might use female sex toys replicating anatomy as source material for their projects. I recalled seeing annoying ads for some of these on certain anime/otaku sites and so went to ebay to see what, if anything was available. It turns out there is quite a lot, surprisingly so. In fact so much I'm not sure whether to be happy at the extent of useful material or dismayed at the state of our culture that has made it available in such variety. Oh well, when you find lemons make lemonade. I initially didn't think any female limbs would be on offer, so I searched for "silicone female torso" and got over 1k hits. These covered a wide variety of items, most interestingly the "silicone female bodysuit" selection. These are basically anatomically correct silicone catsuits for trans-whatevers to wear and impersonate women. The ones I have seen listed so far do not have attached hands, feet or heads/masks. They are of interest because being able to get almost the entire body as one piece will reduce the problem of color-matching different body parts. This led me to wonder about the missing parts, so a search for "silicone female glove" turned up silicone female gloves for trans or hiding scars, and solid silicone hands for modeling jewelry. Searching "silicone female foot" yielded silicone mannequin feet and legs, the larger the item the higher the price, generally. I haven't found any hollow silicone feet yet. And a search for "silicone female mask" yielded same. Most of these were not very attractive although some might rival doll-maker's heads. But it should be remembered that these are masks intended for male trans to wear, and so are probably somewhat larger than a normal female head. The same may or may not be true for the gloves. Presumably the items designed to be worn are skin-safe, in fact some of the bodysuits include catheters and other attachments to accommodate various activities. Prices vary greatly with some venders offering a variety of sizes, colors and breast size. As said a very large selection. Now that we know about this possibility for robowaifu skin, the next thing to do is probably to find trans community sites with reviews and recommendations- pricing, quality, realism, useful lifetime, maintenance, repairs, etc., to gleen more information. *nobody said the journey would be easy or pretty- keep the end goal in mind* The picrels are of some examples from ebay, renamed as they were listed. I'm not recommending anything, just showing examples.

>>28909 No, I don't think so.

>>29428 This is some good research, Anon. Thank you. :^)

>>29394 >>29414 >>29422 >>29423 >>29444 The major differences between the doll heads and the tranny masks seem to be: The thickness of the material- doll rubber is much thicker to withstand the action of anon's body when he is "getting" oral, so too difficult for servos to manipulate for facial expressions without shaving down the thickness (from inside). This might make the material susceptible to tearing when trying to stretch it back over the skull. We might need to cut a slit in the rear like the masks to prevent this. On the other hand the additional thickness may allow for seating magnets to engage opposite pole magnets in slots on an animatronic skull, making removal/installation easier. I'm thinking of the scene from Bicentennial Man where Andrew's face is removed and he screams. We briefly see the inner layer of the face studded with 'somethings'. Shave down the area between them? Oral shouldn't be a problem for waifubot using a tranny mask (presumably they are already used for this) as the waifubot will be the one actually moving and "giving head"- less stressful on the face. Doll heads are made to be interchangeable so customers can mix and match them with their preferred body type. They actually screw on. While they don't wobble like a bobble-head doll, there is a gap between the top of the doll's neck and the head where they overlap which annoys some owners. Tranny masks usually have an integral neck and some portion of the shoulders and upper chest (like the Borg queen) so the lower edges of the mask can be hidden by clothing for a more convincing appearance. It depends on the look you want for your waifu. That's about all I can tell without genuine articles to examine.

Toxic products from China (including clothes): https://youtu.be/BxXDHGnOa_E - Don't use Talcum powder for silicone skin - Cloths for dolls or to make a skin-like material could contain poisonous materials - Metal parts could contain high levels of Led or Cadmium - People with children have to be even more careful. - Western chains might check their imports, even if the products are also made in China. Since they could be sued. >>29428 >>29447 Interesting, I'll look into this later.

>>29448 >Toxic products from China (including clothes): https://youtu.be/BxXDHGnOa_E Really glad I don't live in china >Don't use Talcum powder for silicone skin Cornstarch for humans wearing silicone, or wetsuits, etc. I think we want to keep any kind of fine powder away from the works of our waifus.

A reminder that composites are based. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxKlbik4QjM

>>29448 >china

There is a vastly available pretty much free material. Discarded HDPE bottles, jugs, lawn furniture, and pallets. It just winds up thrown in the dump instead of recycled a lot of the time. Could be chopped up, melted down and injection molded. Technically it can be used as a 3D print filament too with some difficulty.

Materials for hair: >>30524 and >>13862

>>30521 Thanks, I'm aware of that. These materials can be shredded and mixed with TPU and a small amount of another plastic which name I forgot, then it can be made into filament. I don't thing this is worth it, until you have many kilos of PLA waste and we find a way to build a cheap shredder using electroplating and maybe pre-heating the plastics to make it soft.

>>30527 It doesnt really have to be shredded that finely from all the videos ive seen on HDPE recycling often they just melt anything as is but in case of large objects they just need broken up for easier handling. At least in case of using it purely as HDPE not mixed with anything else, i know it would need to be more pellet sized to mix otherwise you will get uneven blending.

>>30529 True, but you still need to form it, also while being warm. It's also being used for making things that way because it's has a low melting point, which might be disadvantage in many cases when it comes to make something useful. Especially with motors that create heat. It's also not very strong, just tends to bend and not break, which can be good for security reasons. I always thought it might be interesting to make full body molds for adding the silicone shell. If someone makes a lot of them, then it might be useful to reduce the price of plastics. For normal prototyping work it doesn't really matter, since plastic isn't really that expensive and we don't need that much and other also it's not the right one. Then again, it might be interesting for people in poor countries. You can collect quite some of it over time just by keeping household waste made out of it. If someone would need more, it might be possible to collect it or ask the company collecting it with containers to buy some of it for cheap. Also, please don't do this indoors, however much you may think the dangers of chemicals or fumes are just something activists make up in their minds. 3D printers have a temperature control and only melt small amounts at a time. Trying to melt bigger parts with a less precise device will certainly create even more dangerous fumes.

>>30529 HDPE type IV and type VII plastics are not thermo-reactive: they can be melted down multiple times without emitting many harmful fumes and remain stable (provided you don't burn them). Any other type of HDPE undergo a chemical change upon heating (thermo-reactive) thus their recycling methods are more complex (usually chemical) and ill suited for DIY use. Typically, the type is a number inside the little recycling symbol. I looked into them a little over a decade ago investigating diy vaccu-forming. Gallon milk jugs are the most common source.

>>30532 My thought process was the moderate flex is good for a shell at least but fact it is used for pallets and deck boards it cant be that bad at supporting weight when thick enough. I am seeing different melting points all over but lower ones i can find is 125°C with a max use temp of 120°C which I think means it doesnt become more flexible until that temperature so it doesn't warp till. Different types of plastics release different kind of chemical fumes. TPU releases hydrogen cyanide when heated enough as one example. Im not sure what HDPE produces. Just thinking of ultra cheap materials. here is a thought what about making paper mache and paper mache clay using food safe silicone glue and unbleached paper ? In theory this should create a fire retardant silicone paper structure.

>>30534 I see. I didn't know there were subtypes of HDPE and I can't even find information substantiating this.

>>5154 >>15227 >oogoo I found something interesting. Apparently if you use PEG 3350 (you know like Miralax type laxatives) instead of corn starch it makes it a shape memory polymer. Found it in some random student lesson. I suspect the ratio needs adjusting though. https://www.uakron.edu/polymer/agpa-k12outreach/lesson-plans/making-a-shape-memory-polymer-from-silicone-i-caulk-and-miralax Then when I looked into this a bit I came across a paper describing use of PEG 600 with silicone to create an electroactive polymer. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/45/48/485303/pdf

>>30535 One of the problems with HDPE is in thinner sections it's a little flimsy. A thought, maybe you could make a mesh of basalt fiber or better, rope, which is super strong then melt the plastic around it. An example, https://basalt-fibertec.ch/index.php/en/basalt-products/tubes-ropes I wonder if you could use Mylar as a film to vacuum form HDPE? Mylar they say, will stay together at 200C. SO you have a plaster ot toher mold with a two sheets of mylar on each side, taped to hold air. Dump HDPE into the mold between the Mylar, heat then draw a vacuum on one side of the mold while heating. It will form to the mold.

>>30584 There may be an interesting line of research...on this sort of thing. Shape memory polymers depend on the strength of the dielectric. So do capacitors. So some of the effects of one should change the same in each. There's this guy called Robert Murray-Smith who has a massive YouTube site with all sorts of good stuff. For the longest he concentrated on capacitors, batteries, graphene, that sort of stuff. He has a should not miss set of videos called, The Strange Capacitor - How To Build It and Improve It Return To The Strange Capacitor I suspect very strongly that this effect in PEG comes from it forming a sort of vesicle. Another name for this is a liposome. It's used in drugs delivery and also in liposomal vitamin c. Usually some sort of fat or protein that make something like a cell wall. It would not surprise me if the same stuff Robert is using in capacitors would help actuators. Another thought. If you had two materials with different responses. One large, one small, then if the two were glued together they would curl or curve like an old fashioned bimetal thermostat.

>>30711 Thanks, interesting idea, but this here is a thread about "Materials", but it drifts more and and more into a general about what can be done with certain materials. We have this general thread exactly for that: >>24152 and >>108 for vacuum forming. >>30716 Dielectric actuators are actuators: >>27021

>>30711 I was thinking mainly of it being a bit on thicker side anyway though that is a lot of material. >>30716 I think it comes from the PEG forming long molecular bonds with itself so it creates a scaffolding that holds it's shape under more tension. PEG also can be used as a solvent of sorts which may be related. >>30725 I had included >>30584 here instead of actuator thread because there is other uses for SMP than an actuator and when making it yourself from chemicals it falls into material science. It can be used for a way to repair dents though im not sure if that is an advantage over more rubbery materials that instantly bounce back. Body temperature activated can be a type of actuator with very limited perhaps for a tiny hand to close on your own so i wouldnt consider that an actuator in the same way something that can be actually controlled, rather it could be more accurate to call it reactive material. Though how to make it in chemical synthesis is a whole other thing above my head.

>>30730 Okay, understood. But please keep in mind that this thread is always in danger to drifting towards becoming another R&D general instead of just covering the materials mentioned in other discussions.