Great news! The 2 degree angle fails. I actually turned it the right way the first time, but I guess 4 degrees was too much. 0 was mostly fine though, so I'm just going to use that.

NOUH FUSION!! Why do you only select visible components???

The bad news is that Finger2 still collides with the motor. Hopefully now that I've moved the motor down (see last log), this problem should finally end.

With the shorter protrusion, I'm thinking of having a different top cover design (on left).

The main reason was to use it for the fingers, but it doesn't seem like my idea panned out as well as I'd hoped. Seems more like a design for the thumbs...

actually actually it's not too bad...

yeah yeah I can accept that art-deco like look

yeaaaa the circles have more of an engine look, but it does look lighter.

From the angle I actually see though, I think I've got something here:

For the fingers tho, it starts to feel disorienting with multiple different straight line angles. I'll keep with the circles.

I'll also get rid of the fillets closest to the motors (original on left, adjusted on right) because it looks more continuous.

I think this is aesthetically acceptable. It's not as ice-cool as the "advanced looking metasurface chiselled into  a solid block" of the non-motor render, but it does get appreciably close.