Quick Change fingernails?

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Fri Dec 13, 2019 7:59 pm

I've been thinking about this for a while. If you guys don't mind brainstorming a bit we can probably come up with a pretty cool solution.
Magnets are my first thought, perhaps glue down small pieces of deburred sheetmetal or small washers and then epoxy tiny magnets to the nails?
Any other suggestions?

BigJoeBuck · Post by **BigJoeBuck** » Fri Dec 13, 2019 8:01 pm

you will need neodymium magnets for this they are super strong

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Sat Dec 14, 2019 2:58 pm

Mods, my apologies for the unintentional duplicate thread I deleted it.

noob1977, I was thinking the same thing but at the same time I'm kind of afraid super strong magnets like that might tear off easily rather than let go.
I think what I'm going to do is used some scrap tpe test pieces that I have here and melt a hole down into them with a soldering iron and place a magnet down inside of them, more like two magnets so that the fingernail has two points of contact and doesn't spin around.

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Sat Dec 14, 2019 6:17 pm

It works!

In the first picture I'm holding the fingernail and my entire piece of test tpe is being suspended by it with no problem. If I pull on it hard enough it will come right off.
In the second picture I'm showing two magnets like the ones I implanted in the tpe, I had to glue them together side by side with a little crazy glue and then I used the pointed tweezers shown in the first picture to puncture the tpe and spread it open to slide the magnets in.
These magnets are 2 mm thick and 6 mm across, I'm a little worried that they may tend to stick the fingers together so tonight I'm ordering some magnets that are 1 millimeter thick and 5 mm across.
The Wire that I used I snipped off of a safety pin, if this works on my test piece with the 5 mm magnets I'm going to go ahead and do hands and feet on both my dolls this way.

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Technician · Post by **Technician** » Tue Dec 24, 2019 1:01 am

A quick update on this little mod, just in case anyone is following. Today I had a little time to put a couple 5mm magnets in my test piece. To my dismay they weren't strong enough to hold my fingernail with the steel wire on it.
I glued a couple of the magnets to another nail but it wasn't completely dry when I left so I couldn't test it.
I'm probably going to get a bunch more 6mm magnets rather than proceed with the 5mm regardless but I am curious to see how well it holds.

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Technician · Post by **Technician** » Tue Dec 24, 2019 1:32 pm

Whoa! Hold the phones, putting magnets on the inside of the fingernails and inside of the fingers worked fantastic now that I can test it! I think I'm going to order a whole bunch more 5 mm magnets.

I can shake this thing around by the fingernail and it doesn't go anywhere but it isn't hard to remove if I just pull on it and it doesn't distort the tpe while it's coming off. Looks like I'm going to have to get a tiny compass so that I can match up the positive and negative poles.

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Technician · Post by **Technician** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 9:54 am

I haven't forgotten this project if anyone's watching, I just got up to 300 of the 5×1mm magnets. That's enough to equip one doll and have 3 sets of nails (hands and feet) since it'll be 2 magnets together in each finger/ toe and 2 per nail.
My doll time is mostly going to the voicebox/AI project right now but I want this.
My plan is to set Bubbles up with implants and one complete set of nails for um... "field testing" to make sure they don't have any issues initially and then get another 300 magnets so I can mod my 100cm and spend a night on mass production nail painting.
I'm envisioning a bug box with 40 little compartments and red/pink/white nails for both of the girls.
That should cover their whole wardrobes for the most part since white is pretty universal and red goes with all that is sexy.

Dollyman25442 · Post by **Dollyman25442** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 10:23 am

Following

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:06 am

Still not done, but I found these coin collecting pocket sheets on Amazon and ordered 10 for $6.USD. Each one will hold 20 so that's fingrrs and toes on one sheet. I'll just do one color per sheet per doll so the magnets don't chip up the nail polish.
My 140cm has a deformation on her feet I'd like to fix before installing the magnets or this would be a thing already but I may do her fingers and test them first.

I think the process may be to tape two magets down to the table, then be able to drop two on top, glue them together, mark the top with a tiny dot of nail polish, and then slide them off to dry.
That way I don't have to concern myself with magnetic poles, as long as the mark is up when I install them, and the mark is against the nail when I glue them to the nail it's good.

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rubherkitty · Post by **rubherkitty** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:46 pm

Great idea!

Magnet to magnet has a strong direct attraction, but it is usually easier to slide the magnets apart vs a direct pull.

Back when I saw this post during initial idea offering, I was thinking of having a magnet glued to the finger tip bone and making finger nails out of 20 gauge (.0359) sheet steel. That's thin enough for a nail, but thick enough to round the edges smooth

Dollyman25442 · Post by **Dollyman25442** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 11:10 pm

I was wondering how this project was coming along.
VEry soon, I'm to perform surgery on Jo using MannequinFans articulated hand system and a part of me was wondering...
First-can a magnet be drilled? Which is to say, could a hole be put through it so a finger wire could be put through it in place of the MF "tip"? Failing that, any ideas on where to source powerful magnets that are pre drilled and quite small?
Just thinking out loud so to speak.

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:32 am

Still working on it, the magnets probably wouldn't have enough power to hold if they were centrally located in the finger though.

Dollyman25442 · Post by **Dollyman25442** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:35 am

Technician wrote:Still working on it, the magnets probably wouldn't have enough power to hold if they were centrally located in the finger though.

Perhaps these?

https://totalelement.com/products/total ... OEQAvD_BwE

Technician · Post by **Technician** » Sat Mar 21, 2020 1:30 pm

I'm using 2 of the smaller magnets glued together side by side. Then the same on the nails and it works well. One magnet may not hold very well so you might end up putting many on the same finger. With those being so large I'd imagine the fingers may also be attracted to one another.
You might want to test on a simulated hand before committing to it.

I'm looking for a good U.S. based source of tpe glue but with the virus limiting non essential companies this may be a while.

Dollyman25442 · Post by **Dollyman25442** » Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:24 am

Technician wrote:I'm using 2 of the smaller magnets glued together side by side. Then the same on the nails and it works well. One magnet may not hold very well so you might end up putting many on the same finger. With those being so large I'd imagine the fingers may also be attracted to one another.
You might want to test on a simulated hand before committing to it.

I'm looking for a good U.S. based source of tpe glue but with the virus limiting non essential companies this may be a while.

I think you would like one of our fellow members products. Indigo has formulated a product he calls a tpe cold weld system. It's not cheap but it works very very well. I have some and I'm speaking from experience with the product.

See more here-

https://www.dollforum.com/forum/viewtop ... 7&t=112678