In response to Reply # 3
Hi Prammaven!
Thanks for your compliments! The nuts I'm using are Nylon lock nuts as Dave has mentioned, the super glue is just to give me more hold as moving the joints constantly will eventually loosen the lock nuts. The spring washers will become weaker over many movement of the joints and to solve that we just unscrew the joint and bend the spring washer or just replace it. The armature design is very simple, although it resembles the Vinton Studio's Brass armature as mentioned by Marc, I believe it is different and original itself, there are no drilling and soldering involved, but you'll need a lot of hand strength though to bend the loops. It took me about 6 hours to build MKIII and at the end of the day your hands and fingers will be quite sore bending the loops. This design allows for modularity. You can make standardized parts and construct various creature armatures for your work. Sort of like "Mechano" or those construction toys with many standardized parts. If only someone can make a machine to make the wireloops, then this can become a great business! I'm not making any money from this, just credit me as the person who started this idea.
This design of mine is not perfect, but it works as a great introduction to learning stopmotion animation. I developed it primarily as a tool to teach stop motion animation at a very low cost. On average each armature cost only a few dollars, provided you buy the materials in bulk. I had my students go to the local hardware and specialty Nuts & Bolts store to buy all the stuff and they got it at great deal. I still have many locknuts,bolts and washers left and essentially have enough material to make 5 more armatures. My MkIII is already more than 2 years old and though the upper body joints are loosening, the lower more robust leg and foot joints still hold their stiffness. If someone can improve the design, I'll gladly share the credit .
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Hello, I have been working on the same idea, but my problem was keeping the nut or screw from coming loose from each of the joints. It looks like it will work in theory, I'm just in the dark as to how to lock the nut with glue, and still be able to tighten the joint.Wouldn't solder work better for that?My design is actually cheaper, I believe. To make each joint, you would simply get two ring terminals for each joint, crimp the terminals onto pieces of wire that don't bend easily, and that's that. As I recall, an armature builder on here wrote in a thread somewhere that he didn't like using joints like this because the animators tended to want to move the puppet in a way that it wouldn't go.The design is cool looking though, and you win the award, Weeliano, for building it first.
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