fingers so that stretch head may employ such clamping fingers in place of pneumatic clamping fingers embodiments further provide mechanisms for controlling a state of spring bias of the clamping fingers where the state of spring bias is related to the clamps being in an open or clamped position fig1 8 show an example of a film stretcher for one axis this film stretcher 100 may be used in conjunction with a clamping mechanism on the opposite side that is either fixed yet uses a same or similar clamping finger configuration or one that is also mobile and uses the same or similar clamping finger configuration as is also discussed below this film stretcher 100 may additionally be used in conjunction with a clamping mechanism on each of the perpendicular sides where one side is mobile and the other is fixed or where both are mobile the discussion below in relation to fig1 presents an example of a stretch head that may utilize the film stretcher 100 this illustrative embodiment of a film stretcher 100 includes an electric motor 102 such as the sgmah08aaf41 1 servomotor from yaskawa america electric inc of waukegan ill this motor 102 provides rotary movement that is used to slide the clamping assembly forward to attach to the film sample and then to pull the clamping assembly backward to begin stretching the film sample after the film sample has been clamped it will be appreciated that the forward and backward motion may be provided in other manners for other embodiments of the film stretcher for example pneumatics may be utilized to provide this forward and backward movement the motor 102 of this embodiment.