Here we show how to make artificial muscles by twisting polymer fibres to form coils. We show some techniques used to make high quality samples and we include electrical conductors so the muscles can be operated electrically.
Major thanks for giving a detailed description of the whole process. Most instructions I've seen don't even talk about the heat-treating process, which you can imagine confused me when I tried making these at home.
*Perfect and I’ve used it for ballon arches as **enjoyable.fishing** recommend well as other decor with parties. It is strong and will hold up well. It works so good that another decorator stole my roll at an event!*
borrowed the bosses for the photography purposes. You know how it goes when unexpected last minute multimedia marketing happens. But really is the coat such an issue Mr or Ms Tailormade SavilleRow?
I think that these are so interesting and this concept is awesome. I'm really curious as to how long these would last though. I mean say we built a arm will it keep working the same after thousands of contractions?
The maximum contraction depends on the coil geometry and can be as high as 80% for large diameter coils. If you can access the figures of the original report (DOI: 10.1126/science.1246906) then you'll see from Fig. 2 that the contraction is set by the coiling conditions and the contraction is quite stable for a range of applied loads above a certain threshold.
I wanna make a fridge using this concept. The cooling and heating effect i find interesting. Could also be used to vaporize and condensate water for collection of distilled water. Which later could be filtrated for purified drinking water.
We generally apply around 1 W of electrical power per 5 cm length of muscle. This heats (and contracts) the muscle in a few seconds. The actual voltage applied depends on the sample length, but we typically use around 0.5 - 1 V per 1 cm length of muscle.
Does this contract and lift as much as human muscle fibres do? Is it even possible that the artificial muscles could outperform human muscles in terms of both contraction length and lifting ability
I got a idea make a air muscles but instead of useing air compressing maybe try electric magnetic slime in a tube not sure if it will work but it be cool to try
Hi BionicMuscles and Dr Spinks, do you have any videos showing the usage and operation of these electrically stimulated fibres and details on electrics, operational time... I would be really interested to use this for an art piece I'm working on
Hi Joe- operating these muscles is really simple. Just supply DC electrical power from a battery or similar. The more volts you put in the faster the muscle will contract. Cooling occurs when the power is turned off, although it can be slow. We typically use around 10V to heat up a muscle that is around 6cm in length and it contracts in 10 seconds or so. Note that they will get very hot- up to 150 degrees Celcius or more if you leave the power on. You can play around with different voltages to suit your needs. Best of luck with your project.
@@k1ng401 We have made really thin fibres into coils by teasing out individual filaments from multifilament polyester yarns and then twisting and coiling them. They do contract and expand very rapidly but you would need many thousands operating together to generate high forces
@@BionicMuscles do you use a correspondingly thinner conductive thread when you do that or have you contined to use the same silver coated nylon you used here?
For the specimen that was constructed in the video, how much force/work is the specimen shown able to do, per strand? (Newtons? Sry , I'm not any sort of expert, just curious) I'm assuming that they would function in bundles as would our own muscle fibres to do useful amounts of work? Thanks for the video.
We are not aware of any other suppliers for the silver coated nylon yarn. However, as an alternative approach we know that others have had success by first making coils from ordinary fishing line and then over-wrapping the coiled fishing line with a thin copper wire. Its best to wrap the copper wire in the opposite direction to the coil.
The silver coated nylon yarn we used here was around 0.2 mm in diameter and we have used the coiled muscles made from these yarns for many thousands of cycles without any problems.
I'm sorry but I have an another question. I tried making artificial muscles at home. The length of the nylon was 1m and the thickness was 0.2mm. And I made a 20cm coil out of nylon. The coil was then heated to 180 °C in an oven for 1 hour. Those coils boasted significant shrinkage. We also compared the calculated and actual values using the linear equilibrium coefficient of nylon. However, the calculated value was much smaller than the actual value. so, can you explain the physical principle behind the coil?
@@SinWonMiSang The coils shrink in length because heating causes the fibre that makes up the coil to untwist. When this happens the length of the coil reduces. This is the same phenomenon that occurs during the stretching of a coiled wire spring: the wire actually twists as the spring is stretched. You can see the fibre untwist on heating by making a sample from fishing line and twisting it until just before coiling. If you then heat-set this twisted fibre you will trap in the twist. Next, if you heat and cool this fibre you will see it untwist on heating and re-twist on cooling.
All I could think about was how big her lab coat was. Crazy. You are showing something as important as this and you take our attention away because of an oversized coat!!!
Maybe you have Attention Deficit Disorder? While I noticed the lab coat was a bit large, it in no way distracted me from the information what was being put forth. Regardless, if her lab coat distracted you to the point that you were unable to pay attention to the video, you should consider seeing a doctor. There are some who simply cannot learn in a classroom because they can only focus on the teacher/professor's hair, clothes, speaking style, etc., despite none of it being relevant to the course material. I can only imagine how difficult life must be for people with these types of focus issues. I know there are medications that can help though, so do consider seeing your doctor. Best regards.
