well my post got deleted. anyways. a silicone bucket git dropped while i was movibg to my new place. however the silicone i got from alibaba wasnt very good. i did manage to make an extra mask. im not sure if it the mask has holes because of the air bubbles that got in while it was curing. anyways i plan on being a little more budhet concious moving forward. instead of getting high grade silicone rubber ill use silicon vaulk from the hardware store and mix it with 1/5 portion silicon oil.

>>23722 Why not just print the skin in TPU? Any chainmail flexibility would need a soft underlayer anyway. That soft underlayer could be the "fat" of the robot, and the TPU its skin.

>>34582 >Why not just print the skin in TPU? Durability and TPU is a little sticky, yucky feeling and all sorts of stuff stick to it. It's great if it's lubed, for certain appendages, but who wants to hold a head to toe perpetually lubed waifu? TPU is hard to keep clean. A resin based chain mail like the NASA stuff printed in very small links, like 0.5 mm or less, would be smooth, durable, easily washable and stuff would not stick to it. I bet it would feel like skin. Rub a fiberglass boat that has been waxed. Very smooth, nice feel. Skin has a layer of oil on it that I think could be approximated, maybe. Since it's flexible it would not be hard like a boat.

>>34582 i started off printing tpu and it came out quiet hard. its a95 which is not soft. silicon caulk is softer and can be made softer with silicon oil. theres softer tpus which are 60a but again im being budget concious and 60a is not great either way.

>>34583 I don't know how precise and accurate resin printers are, but with FDM printers, making a 0.5 mm link is like trying to make a watercolor painting on a postage stamp by hand.

BTW one of the major, really major reasons I'm thinking about this is manufacturing ability, you pour resins in molds and cost. Making a mold for TPU I think would be more difficult but I may be wrong. I aos like that it;s long lasting and very easy to clean. Silicon. TPU, this stuff is a major dust, yuck collection system. I don't like the "surface" feel of it.

>>34586 for manufacturing youd use tpe with injection molds >>34585 ypu can get 0.1 mm nozzles for fdm the standard is 0.4 dont know what you mean by 0.05 mm link

>>34588 the only advantage resin printers habe is that theyre not porous and they bond better becayse of the melting with the shiny lasers. you get a resin printer youre limited to printing brittle resin and thats it. if you want to do robotics you should get an fdm printer.

>>34588 Even with a 0.1 mm nozzle, it would be difficult.

>>34590 sonething like this but with 0.5mm hexagons you mean?

>>34591 if anhexagon has a diameter of 5 mm then each side woukd be 2.5 mm. so a 2mm nozzle would be good enough.

>>34591 No, chainmail with 0.5 mm links >>34583

>>34592 divide that by 10. brainfart. >>34593 well then each side is 0.5 so 0.5 mm nozzle if it has to be exact or 0.1mm nozzle.the layer height is between 0.1 -0.5 mm regardless of the nozzle size.

I just received a ELEGOO Mars 4 Ultra today. The "stated" resolution is, XY RESOLUTION 18 µm (0.0007086614) in. (8520x4320) ten thousandth=0.0001 inch equals 2.54 micrometers ten thousands is high quality machine production level I believe] Z-AXIS ACCURACY 0.02 mm (.0007874016 in.) The print area is small but really no real 100% fail as pieces can be joined. (6.037795 in. x 3.061417 in x 6.496063 in ^3) I got it for $189.99 USD. Cheap for what it can do. Supposedly. I haven't heard super bad stuff about it. I only pulled the trigger because Turkey day sale and possible tariffs coming up. I wish, really wish, I could afford a Bamboo mini A1, I think, and others think., the very best small filament printer. They are $200 USD. If they're not lying, which they probably are, then 0.5mm is no problem. In fact even if they are lying it may be that you can get 0.25mm across with the right settings, resin and holding your mouth right while you wait for it to print. If each pixel is 18 µm or 0.018mm then you have 13.8 pixels across the top of a 0.25mm skin cell(the face of the chain). I "think" you could still have enough strength if the back connectors were smaller but don't know. At twice that, 0.5 mm, I think would be much easier and likely would be fine but I think 0.25mm would be ideal. Look at a ruler, 0.25mm across for a skin cell (I'm calling it that) or even 0.5mm is really small. I will find out eventually. I warn you I will be VERY slow about this. I already have stuff backed up to do. I bought for long term use as a way to make parts in molds. I expect it will take me forever to learn and use this software to do so but once I get it maybe it won't be too bad. Make shell molds, fairly accurately, then fill with composites to make parts. The molds can even be made in sections and joined together with 3D printed built in wedge fasteners, or so I imagine. I expect the whole thing to be very tricky but I also expect the promise to make anything or close to it is there. Think about using chopped glass and/or carbon fiber with resin/epoxy. We're talking super strong stuff. With Japanese, and European, wood joinery techniques you can join lots of small pieces into very large pieces. In fact I have despaired that modern manufacturing does not use these methods in joining things with wedges instead of screws. Screws suck. I also ordered a pound of milled glass fiber, (1/16 inch, I think, very small), and a quart of silica fume, (extremely small, manometer sized), to mix with the resin. Have coming a liter of water washable egeloo resin. Excellent videos to watch on composites are by a guy, Tech Ingredients. I knew a bunch of stuff he talked about but he laid it out in such an organized and quality way that it really makes you think about the possibilities. Here's two very good videos to search for, Easy Tricks Using Fiberglass Strengthening! This next one bears watching several times. It's very good and if you get what he is saying it opens lots of possibilities. Super Strong Epoxy with Diamonds and More!

>>34589 >if you want to do robotics you should get an fdm printer Your not understanding my focus and what I'm trying to do. I'm not bashing FDM printers, I actually like them much better. But I can only afford one right now and the highest resolution is the winner. I do NOT want to make parts with the resin, only MOLDS.

>>34595 Holy shit, that is amazing resolution.

>>34595 ii think ill just make an hexagon mesh thats flat and experiment with that. it can be cut a joined(melted with a soldering iron..

>>34591 I mean exactly like the link in these comments. >>33010 >>33784

>>34596 for molds theres air dry clay and silicon mold making liquid too.

>>34597 >Holy shit, that is amazing resolution Yes it is, 'm amazed, and I do expect something close to advertised because it's a LCD screen that is projected onto the build plate. So it should be somewhat close, I hope.

>>34598 >hexagon mesh thats flat and experiment with that I agree that is a much faster and easier method. And I also agree that what I'm trying might be a big fail but not totally as I'll still have the printer and have lots of stuff I want to do with it so... But "long term" If you could make skin molds so that you could squeegee on resin in layers then you could make the whole skin suit in few passes. One layer, resin, another, resin, etc. then you have the whole skin in one piece, with the exception is has one joint or two from bottom to top. I think it very likely that one or more sections of the molds you put down will have to be something removable. Like low melting point metal, or melted sugar or mold release, something you can wash out. You can get metal that melts in boiling water. It's expensive but can be used over and over. I really like the idea of using it. The sacrificial parts would be like a metal screen laid over the lower parts. Lay it down, more resin, maybe another layer of metal screen, more resin, let dry then heat it with a heat gun and the metal runs out. Or throw it in a pot of boiling water. In fact your mold could BE that low melting resin which you recreate in another mold for every time you make a waifu skinsuit. My thinking is that each section of the skin could be made of repeating unit molds joined together. So print mold for making the mold. Make copies of this mold for flatter areas, meaning most body areas. But for entrances, eyes, mouth etc., you would have to think hard and maybe vary the angle or bend of the molds. So those areas would need special molds but could be glued to the normal molds. Most of the body skin could be one repeating mold structure.Think skinning an animal. The skin is one big sheet. If you think that I do not have this all figured out, you would be right. I have some ideas. One is to make where the two sections of the skin join have links and then run a UHDPE (super strong)fishing line to pull them together. So you undo one line at the head or on the feet or wherever and then you can separate off the skin. Once you do that the under layers can be easily taken off. For the line you may need some sort of latch??? I don't know yet. Have to make something and see what it does. I don't think you can visualize this. Have to build it and see.

>>34600 >for molds theres .... all sorts of stuff once you have the body printed. Or, even better, you print the mold.

>>34602 im printing the mesh. one regular piece of tpu amd one mesh with hexagons that are 5 mm in diameter. theyre both 100% infill. ill post the results soonish on yputube shorts. the 5mm gap is still sonewhat visible though. the slicer was giving me issues when the diameter was 1mm and below.

>>34602 well 3-5mm you know the slicer ruler isnt perfect

>>34610 and here are the results https://youtube.com/shorts/pjZJNI_y2Xc?si=GfhXKkaoCyCk75sv not sure but i think the smaller the gaps the harder it will be. overall i dont think regular 95a tpu is viable.

>TPU meshing coming up again Perhaps you could benefit from learning from my failures? >>24665

>>34618 interesting. Caight me printing spheres... the slicer might complain about this shape though.

>>34621 the sphere half spere grid is not too bad but it breaks too easily. itd also have tiny holes. also disregard the 20 newtons i got it mixed up it is 10 newtons.

5 newtons of force are required to open the mouth 1 cm with sophiedevs design. this mesh could work i guess. the holes are just not nearly as aesthetic if proper ecoflex or some other platinum silicone rubber was used.

>>34629 still what im thinking is that the only part of the face that really needs to be stretchy is the mouth. hannah dev has not made his files publicly available. I might borrow his design because it seems to work well enough. i might go as far as making magnetic linear actuators as well. i might skip back and forth though because after the eyes are done i will... work on the legs and that is robotics sacred cow because thats where you introduce a control system. that is where a lot of roboticist dare not venture and thats whats going to set what im doing apart along with the robot spine. because without those two things you can not make a sex bot. i expect that will make a lot of people upset. so ill be hardly surprised.

Looking at 3D chain mail I found a video I had looked at before but maybe now I see it in a new light. It's Self-assembling material pops into 3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrOjy-v5JgQ Using slits cut into flat sheets, I think this is here on the site somewhere, but I can't remember where, but a repeat won't hurt to tie two ideas together. So when you cut, or print, these slots and pull on the material if done right the flat becomes a 3D structure and stays that way. I was thinking...what if you combined a printed NASA type chain mail "with" an underlying slit cut structure. So you print all these things out and the natural tension of the slits, and not slits, conforms the chain mail, attached to it, to be a part of the body. Gaming this I could see how form fitting skin would need far less "attachment" for it to stay in place. You might could also print in the attachments into another layer under the stilted one. Tying this all into a nice package together nicely.

Here's another, Why Machines That Bend Are Better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97t7Xj_iBv0 This about compliant mechanisms. What's magic about this is structures are built that have no hinges but the way they are structured they can snap into one, or many, positions. Once snapped into position, depending on how you made it, it can stay there. What I'm trying to convey is that by the magic of 3D printing you can use all these forces to do away with a huge mass of fasteners, bolts connectors, large slabs of silicon (not cheap) and use design to make simple things with complicated reactions built into them. They want to conform, yet are flexible. This of course means lower cost. Though it will not be rasy I supect you could use these structures to do away with silicon mimicking fat over the muscles and connective tissue with a slightly rigid plastic in a sort of tensegrity way. I suspect you would lower cost a lot and lower weight by using bending moments instead of bulk material. I'm reasonably certain that you could make a $2,000 USD robowaifu with a good look and controllable muscles "but" I'm not nearly so certain you could get one that would do much. It could walk around but...follow directions, likely not. I think the cost to get that would be, well I don't know. I expect it would be high. A good motherboard, processor, memory, etc. could easily run for something with a bit of power $1,000 or WAY more for the high end. That will blow the budget. I suspect for $2,000 a good waifu would sell fast, in volume, but as you go up in price I think it would thin out fast. Since inflation has been so bad maybe you could stretch that to $3,000 USD but I think much higher would sell, but not as easy.

>>34657 >>34658 These are awesome Grommet, thanks! >I think this is here on the site somewhere, but I can't remember where Any chance you could try a Waifusearch for it, Anon? It would be helpful to know what you're talking about. >tensegrity, et al YES! We've been concerned with using this approach to simplify, improve, and reduce the costs of robowaifu designs for years. I think this is a great idea you're conveying here to use resilient and lightweight, underlying tensegrity forms as 'muscles', 'fat', &tc. Thanks for the good ideas, Anon. Please keep them coming! Cheers. :^)

>>34659 >tensegrity There was a guy on here that made a thread about using that for his waifubot, but he disappeared.

yeah even if it did work it would not look good not worth pursuing. Anyways making microscopic plastic structures is clearly not viable. Silicone caulk from the hardware store is like $4 for 1/3 a kg silicone oil $4 per kg That is cheap really cheap. Its just the process is making the skin with silicone is hard and tedious. Just say that instead of saying you can't spend $8.

>>34661 forgot to post pic

>>34661 >yeah even if it did work it would not look good not worth pursuing... We'll see. I've made it clear that, to me, silicon feels like shit, attracts all sorts of crap and is hard to keep clean. It tears really easy. And while silicon and latex from the hardware store is not super expensive, the first class stuff, stuff I would want, from mask-makers, Hollywood class stuff is expensive. It just is, but it's good stuff. What I've after may not work but...I think it will and I think the durability, cleanliness and the smooth skin like feel will make it far more attractive. I wonder if you could get some thing that could just walk, maybe follow you around, a few set moves but open source the software, could you get people to give $3,000 for it??? I think maybe I could make money at that price with a super weak processor BUT provide a cavity and a upgrade capability. I could not write the AI software. There is the possibility I could somehow get an AI to do it for me. I read this forum where a guy who has been programming for a long, long time and he talks about how he has improved his productivity with AI sometimes over 10,000 %, Yes 10,000%. He, first knows what he is doing, so he can set up the AI in terms very precise and the AI writes all the boilerplate code. Does all the database integration, ties in his interface with all this other code, gathers all the needed open source software to do any data conversions and writes all this stuff pout to his specs immediately. It's extraordinary. You can actually feel the joy in his writing. BUT he knows what he is doing with the code and can aim the AI in the right direction specifically. I don't. I "think" (likely a super overestimation of my capabilities)(make that major)(make that even more major) but, I think I could do all the code to move it around. Walk. If only write the code and have the thing wallow around and reward it when it does right. No doubt at all I could easily, very easily be wrong about that. @Chobitsu What you are looking for is conformal sheets-paper-materials. I found a paper and it can be used for further search terms. Strong conformable structure via tension activated kirigami https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-023-00357-4

If you look at the paper you can see how slits make conformal structures. I believe, that there would be no blocks to making these conform to a waifu. Imagine these structures with stiff areas(the folded parts, maybe made of fiberglass sheets), the outer skin could be one, with some sort of latch or hook to the inner muscle. Separating, actually gluing it together, would be something like TPU or silicon, a proper place for it , inside. Some kind of TPU or other elastomer would likely be best. It needs to not tear easily. There's all sorts of urethanes that do this I believe. So you could pour them in molds. Then you have a structure that can be tuned for to be soft or firm depending on it's structure. I think the best way to sell these would be a pile of parts in a box with good instructions. I "think" that would cut off a lot of feminazi complaints, well not their complaints, those will be voracious, but their ability to do anything about it legally.

I forgot to point out the exact search terms to find that paper "slits in paper to make conformal"

the slicer is really picky and unless the dimensions are the dimemsions it wants it wont print the grid pattern. it also doesnt want to print a 1mm flat layer. but i tricked it by raising the honey come 1 mm and adding supports. i made a slit on the honeycomb pattern abd i did notice that does allow it to stretch more. it moving up and diwn might not be an issue one of the issues i see doing certain vowels like the letter "o" and im rewatching hannah devs video amd he didnt manage to make the letter o either. pic related is supposed to be o. im only focusing on this cause im out of gas($$$) until december the 11th or else id be getting the iron and working on the robot eye.

>>34667 no im afraid adding a mere 1mm layer makes it way more rigid. anyways its worth experimenting with silicone caulk and silicone cause the costs will add up for the entire body. chatgpt is decent at coding btw but worthless at stem. anyways assuming the body is 5*2*1 feet its volume is 10 feet^3 1 cubic foot is 29 liters. 290 liters *(270ml/1000ml)=78.3 silicone caulks but itd used a fraction of that unless it was filled so lets divide it by 5. lets say 16 silicone caulks. tbh here 270 ml of silucone caulk is like $2 so $32 def worth looking into...

>>34663 >>34665 >>34666 Thanks for the additional info, Grommet. >>34667 >>34668 Good luck with your work, peteblank.

>>34667 What slicer, nozzle size, and wall thickness are you using?

>>34684 creality slicer, 0.4 mm, 0.2 mm standard(thats the wall thickness one right) not saying im opposed to using regukar tpu if it works, thatd be conviniemt. I just see no reason it should work. Soecially after playing aroubd with the honeycomb pattern and all that. >>34683 ty

>>34685 That's weird, it should work. Maybe it's something with the file?

>>34668 >no im afraid adding a mere 1mm layer makes it way more rigid I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are doing(printing), so this might not fit, but, as a general rule try to make everything you print (after you get the shape you want)a "mold". Not the finished product. Why? Filament is weak unless you spend a fortune on picky hard to print stuff. Mold materials, as you stated, are cheap in comparison and the mold can be thin, with honey comb or slat supports on the outside to strengthen the mold. The outside supports could also act as print supports. The counter to this is, it's damn difficult to get the object into mold form for printing. I suspect, somewhere, there's software to make negatives of whatever you are printing. I haven't got to that point yet. I know there are negatives of basic shapes you can enter into another shape, like a erasing negative mold object brush if you can imagine that. If you could make the, let's say, face, then push it into a block as a negative mold brush...that block would be the mold. Once you print the mold you wax it or use some other mold release then you can experiment with all sorts of materials you pour, put, push into the mold. I'm willing to bet once you have this negative mold brush, or shell creation task thought out and the actions needed in software to do it then it would be fairly fast and routine to do this. Kiwi lite a neuron in my brain when he talked about this using meshes. He talked about how fast it as to make them and thin shells. You could do the same with this molds. Print fast, use less material and rapidly printing prototypes is the key to rapid advancement. A quick idea I found about NASA chain mail. Some people are printing these sideways. The faces of the chainmail are vertical, then stacking them side by side, with one side of the loops being on the floor. I could see how this could get you far better resolution and pack way more chainmail in the same space. Possibly you could print one layer, then have another over the first, and another, etc. This is if you could work out the supports so that they could be removed without screwing up the whole thing. One layer with vertical faces I know can be done. I looked at the specs for a bambu A1 Mini, FP, and it has a standard layer height of .02 mm. I expect that this means you could print a vertically faced chainmail at a fairly high resolution even with a filament printer. It doesn't have the x-y resolution listed in the main spec page. As long as this is accurate you can get "mold" resolutions far higher than the nozzle resolution because we are only printing surfaces.

>>34697 In my experience, standard PLA is pretty good for most applications. Sure, it isn't Terminator durable, but fortunately we're making domestic robots, not Terminators.

Has anybody considered incorporating keratin based materials as a skin? I understand that it is not exactly something a garage tech would have access to, but as our projects get larger and larger, eventually we'll be able to create synthetic skin to cover the droid. To me, having self healing or at the very least easily repairable skin is going to be a majorly important part of the marketability of these machines, especially if they are going to be used for things outside the confines of a bedroom. My idea would be to create some kind of TPU based substrate layer that contains bioactive compounds and amino acids. The body would then be dipped in a bath or sprayed with layer of fluid containing keratinocytes that would attach onto the TPU and form chemical bonds. This would then be cultured until the desired skin thickness is met and the keratinocytes would be killed via heat sterilization. This would give us a seamless skin along with a durability very similar to human collagen-keratin based skin. It would also feel way more realistic than any purely artiifcial solution. When the robot's skin is damaged, depending on the severity, if the TPU layer is still intact, a bandage containing keratinocytes could be applied along with a spay containing amino acids and other molecules needed for the keratinocytes to produce new skin.

>>34724 Bro's making a T-800 Jokes aside, that's an interesting idea. But I wonder how nail/hair based skin would feel. Maybe if some VERY ambitious people in the future are trying to make bio-androids, they can use that to make the nails and hair.

>>34724 Not sure how this would work. But it strikes me as interesting. Interesting idea, thanks. For what are such keratinocytes being used? Where could we get them? I crosslinked this in the cyborg thread >>2184 here >>34790 after looking into it. Since I don't think this will be possible without dabbling in biology, probably using something like "epidermal stem cells in the lower part of the epidermis". I'd guess we would need to grow these in some kind of bioreator?! These layers also only last 50 days and are then normally being shed, because the cells die automatically. They come into life in one way and transform till they die. If we would want to use them longer we would need some cream for that, to make the skin last way longer. I assume they would also need to be genetically altered to not go through the process where the become "corneocytes" and then die. Alternatively the bot could consume and distribute such cells every few days inside it's body underneath it's skin, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratinocyte