Tag: diy prosthetic

Printable Prosthetics: A Mock Hand

More progress on a fully parametric prosthetic design
More progress on a fully parametric prosthetic design

Here you can see the fingers placed appropriately with the palm. I’ve used the same “finger” designs to add a thumb.

For right now, this is just to demonstrate the progress so far.  Theoretically, the only thing left to do is crank out an appropriate gauntlet to bring the entire design together.  In reality, there’s still a fair amount of work to do.  The design for the prosthetic palms was… not elegant.  Also, I want to create a separate (but very similar) design for the thumb.1 It is possible that if I improved the finger designs, I might be able to get away without designing a separate thumb.

In the meantime, I think it looks good and would probably be functional as-is.

Onwards and upwards!

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  1. I feel like the thumb should be stubbier, so I’ll go back and adjust the designs accordingly. [↩]

Printable Parametric Prosthetics: Design Features

Parametric fingers - different lengths, same scale, with no distortion to hardware
Parametric fingers – different lengths, same scale, with no distortion to hardware

I’m not ashamed to admit it – I’m proud of these parametric designs like few of my other designs.  I’ve worked to make this design as customizable and organic as possible.  The two modules that define each finger can be customized in two important ways – they can be lengthened1 as well as scaled up or down – without any distortion or change in the size of the holes for the hardware, elastic cords, or tension cords.

Parametric fingers - with grippy bits
Parametric fingers – with grippy bits

Being able to lengthen2 the finger segments is important because it allows the user to create fingers of different lengths, as normal fingers are of different lengths, all without having to actually scale the fingers to different sizes and without causing a change in each finger’s diameter.

As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, being able to scale the parts up and down without distortion to the hardware holes is important because it allows users to use standard hardware throughout different designs.

For now, it’s back to work on the parametric palm to ensure a proper fit with these parts.

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  1. Or shortened [↩]
  2. Or shorten [↩]