[HH] Opening a skull (on topic, honest!)

[Tom Metro]

Mark Komarinski wrote:
> The tension that's required to open it is too much for the
> servo that I have.  I was thinking a linear actuator...

A solenoid is the obvious thing that comes to mind:
http://www.halted.com/commerce/catalog/product.jsp?product_id=13355&czuid=1335905228724
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/SOL-102/MINIATURE-12VDC-PUSH-TYPE-SOLENOID/1.html

Of course with a solenoid you're pretty much stuck with a fast acting,
full travel motion. If you want to some day animate the mouth to sync to
speech or something, then it wouldn't be the right choice.

Otherwise, they're cheap and powerful.

If you scale up, pneumatics can do this sort of thing really well too.

 -Tom