u/Former-University119

I'm building linkages for costume wings: looking for advice

I'm building linkages for costume wings: looking for advice

https://i.imgur.com/URAy2o8.jpeg

I'm not a real engineer (Software engineer unfortunately ☹️) and I figured that posting about this in a subreddit like r/Puppetry or r/CosplayHelp would be too in the weeds. I'm building a wing linkage system for a costume, and currently it's going pretty well. The wings fold and unfold nicely, and it's all powered by a remotely controlled, 4" 1000N linear actuator(soon to be 3" when my new one arrives). I was looking to see if anyone had any general advice about this system from briefly eyeballing the linked photo: any possible problems with my design that could go disastrously wrong way down the line?

Also, I'm specifically wondering if there's any way to make the angle of the last "bone" in the wing more acute when folded. I know I could just move the attachment for the middle bones to be wider (shown in blue in my photo), but I'd like to minimize the width of the linkages here, since this is for a more "skeletal" kind of wing where such width would be noticeable compared to something like an angel wing where it's all covered in feathers.

Overall this has been a fun project and a usual change of pace for me, and I'm excited by how much I'm learning about this stuff. Any pointers or ideas on what to do next would be much appreciated :)

u/Former-University119 — 2 days ago