by a floating joint, I meant a bone that is roughly in the middle of the tube and parented to the forearm, then you'd just translate/rotate that "floating joint" as needed
I feel the IK chain showed in the video will work just needs some tweaking. I agree with the less bones will make it more manageable so I reduced the amount. I'm not too sure what you mean by the extra floating joint. Are you talking about a bone sticking out of the forearm and ending where the tube/cable starts? Sorry for…
I think if it were me, I'd try using a whole lot less bones. I think clever skin weighting between the spine and the forearm on the cables will go pretty far, and then maybe have one extra floating joint (per arm) that's positioned in the middle of each tube that is parented to the forearm that you can animate for whenever…