Small motor that could fit inside a finger sized cavity (for finger prosthetic)?

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Background: about three weeks ago, I lost my wedding ring finger in a ring avulsion injury (don’t look that one up if you are squeamish!). I now have a finger there until the first knuckle.

Subsequently, as I had just started messing about with electronics (I’m a web developer but have literally no idea what I’m doing with any of this stuff) I wondered how feasible it might be to make a prosthetic finger that uses a myoelectric sensor to activate?

My first idea hinges around a small motor that can rotate in either direction to pull on cables attached to the top and bottom of each of the last two ‘bones’ of the prosthetic finger.

Anyway, long story short: does anyone know if such a thing might exist? I don’t imagine it would need to be terribly powerful but it does need to be small.

Thanks for any pointers.

Ben

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@benfrain Sorry about your loss, and yes, there are quite a few advances in terms of “DIY” prosthetics. Most revolve around arm and hand replacements, where the fingers all work in unison. However, there are advances which are directly relevant to your situation:

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Hi @cbenson — I was wondering in particular about the availability of small motors, something around 10mm in diameter? I’d like to house the motor inside the ‘finger’ if possible and this is the limit space I would have available.

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RobotShop does not offer much in that size. Some ideas:




These are very low torque though.

This type of motor is 12mm wide and there is a good selection of gear ratios etc:

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Thanks @cbenson — appreciate that! I’ve got a lot of research to do :slight_smile: