help, my tentacle's shearing

subsurface

Dear all,

it's my first post here and I'm happy to have found this place! After watching the lesson on Tentacle Mechanisms I'm building my own. I'm quite happy with it and still there are things I want to improve:

a) the bending happens mostly in the lower part of each stage. Are there any techniques on how to distribute the bending more evenly?

b) After moving it I can't get it back to the original/straight position. The tentacle seems to shear, like a parallelogram. Is this normal and are there ways to improve this fact?

Maybe you can take a brief look at my video to see what I mean:

https://youtu.be/azKfiAf8lno

Thank you and best regards,

Julez

Chris Ellerby

Hi Julez,

First off, welcome!  Your tentacle and controls look great.  My first thought for addressing the issue would be to adjust the tension on the 4 wires for each stage of the tentacle.   For example, if the wires for left/right on a tentacle are not tight enough (and the same tension) the tentacle will not be able to center straight since there is an uneven force on it.

Dialing in a tentacle can be a bit challenging, but you are off to a great start!

/Chris

subsurface

Dear Chris,

thank you very much for your thoughts! I'll try to make them even more tight as soon as I'm in the workshop at the weekend. From my feeling they are already quite tight, but it's this shearing parallelogram-thing that's happening all the time...
Well, slowly getting there, it's so much fun!

Thanks and all the best, Julez