Duane Bascom

English 1010

3D Printed Prosthetics

For those people who have experienced being an amputee or have a close one who is an

amputee, making sure they are able to live as close to a normal life as possible is the most

important thing for them. With the advancements in 3D printing and solid model data we are

now able to print custom fitted prosthesis for our loved ones. The only question is with how

expensive equipment and the initial purchase if the cost outweighs the savings and comfort of

the receiving party. With the advancements we have made and continue to make 3D printing

has and will continue to be revolutionary in the prosthesis industry.

3D printing is the production of objects, almost unrestricted in shape, by adding

successive layers of a material. To obtain a product or prototype, the desired object is

modelled in 3D CAD software; exported as an STL file (general format for 3D printing);

subsequently, this file is fed into the slicer software that translates it into a g-code file. This file

contains the list of orders (trajectories, temperatures, etc.) that the machine will execute. In all

AM or 3D printing processes, the construction by layers produces a surface roughness, called

staircase effect, which is related with the layer thickness. In order to soften this shortcoming,

there are some surface treatment solutions, such as polishing, painting, application of acetone

or other specific products for this purpose. The XTC, from ON-Smooth Company is economical,

rectifies the staircase effect and can be applied onto various types of surfaces such as plastic,

paper, foam, cardboard, ABS and PLA. After its application, parts can be painted or coated. The

final aspect is a glossy surface on the prosthesis. The most common AM process currently

available is the Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), presented in 1991 by Stratasys Inc, USA.

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This process consists in extruding a filament, usually plastic, through a heated nozzle which is

fed by a reel. Typically, these machines have two extrusion heads, one for the construction

material and the other to the support material. The simplicity of construction and operation of

this process led to a significant growth of equipment sold by many companies. Since the FDM

patent was dropped the open-source equipment emerged with an exponential growth as many

users (designers, engineers, students and others), called 'makers', build their own customized

equipment. (Ferreira)

There is a reasonable doubt on if this technology is ready to assist the low- or middle-

class income brackets of 3rd world countries. They believe that even if the technology is ready

and efficient that they lack prosthetists in the area and training facilities. In most cases they

must send someone to a different country to be trained. When looking into this, Brienna

Phillips noticed that less 5% of the population had access to these services and for long term

successful use of the prosthesis the amputees must travel a long way to get to additional

maintenance and rehabilitation at the cost of the amputee. But they have found with multiple

distribution networks such as Faith-based organizations, non-profits, for profits and hospital

orthopedic centers they could increase distribution abilities. They also found to speed things

up that a combination of 3D printing and plastic injection molded parts are the way to go so the

amputees don’t have to wait days after being seen to receive a prosthetic.

One of the best benefits to a 3D printed prosthetic is the reduction of price in

comparison to the normal prosthetic. An amputee can be expected to pay upwards of $10,000-

40,000 for a functional leg or hand prosthetic where a 3D printed prosthetic can be as low as

$500. This alone is reason enough to continue our research into being able to make stronger

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and more customizable prosthetics while saving the amputees a huge amount of cost. With the

codes for these prostheses being open source it also means that as costs of 3D printing

equipment goes down that we very well could see a world that includes being able to print

entire prosthetics at home. This would make personal customization easier and bring in a

creative side in compared to the limitations the hospitals offer now. Printing replacement

pieces and doing maintenance would also come to the home so the amputee only must seek

the rehabilitation to properly succeed in transitioning to a prosthetic replacement. This still

shows that this method of creating prostheses is important and needed because even though

there are limitations on delivering them, the people who receive them will still have their lives

changed for the better at a fraction of the cost.

Currently without sensory function dialed in yet for any working prostheses we need to

use some sort of flexion or extension to get the grabbing motion for the fingers and thumb

units. If the amputee has a partial hand reduction, they can flex and extend their wrist and the

small springs and wires will move their connected parts to close and open the hand. While

amputees with wrist disarticulation they must have the small springs and wire ran up to the

elbow and rely on bending the arm to activate the movement of the prosthetic. For us this

sounds annoying and troublesome instead of having a hand but while it does have its difficulties

in learning is still something that gets our amputees closer to a normal lifestyle than they were

before.

Brienna Phillips and her team realized that when it comes to physically laborious careers

that these prostheses don’t stand up as well as they would like them to. They believe that with

3D printing of stronger materials such as metals, although more expensive, would be the way to

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go to increase strength. They believe the mechanisms for movement could be redesigned to

increase the ability of tasks the prostheses could accomplish. With our current standards they

believe the people who would benefit the most would be the people who are leg amputees as

people rely more on their legs for transportation and mobility to be able to work and survive.

This proves that this technology is still viable and will only get more important as we continue

to advance our technology and our understanding of how to put it into place to help the people

who need it. Soon people will be able to print prostheses that are mad of aluminum and other

metals that are stronger than our current limbs and will be able to use them to do hard physical

jobs that they currently can’t perform. This opens opportunities they probably thought would

never be possible.

Using the research from Brienna Phillips and her team as well as the e-NABLE team,

Ferreira and his team collaborated and made improvements upon their designs to create an

even more life like 3D printed model. They made considerations that they currently only have

one motion for the thumb digit and that all fingers were the same size which isn’t the case with

most real hands. They did sculpture studies of hands and took real life measurements to put

into their models as well as studied the types of joints each part of the hand has and how it

works to better their designs. They came up with a thumb that has two positions and grips

better to make more tasks possible for the amputee as well as modeled the fingers to be more

accurately sized. This allows them to make multiple sized prostheses with the simple use of

grading or scaling the model to change all parts proportionally to the receiving amputee. The

parts they used that are not 3D printed are easily found in most places because they weren’t

customized in anyway which increases the population that this model can help. This goes to

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show that having the files in an open source file type can let people around the world in to help

make changes and increase functionality of the prostheses. This creates a world that allows

people to help each other without greed and cost getting in the way and allowing mankind to

prosper by helping those who need it. Allowing those capable of helping instead of putting

patents and charging for these designs helps those in need get their prosthesis while letting

others chime in on how to make it better.

This is an incredible and heartwarming find that this community exists that come

together to make these things possible. 3D printing will continue to grow and become better

and increase its reach of people it can help. As this technology advances and becomes more

available these prostheses will only get stronger and more capable of doing the jobs, they need

to in order to help our community that receives or are born with amputations. This will

increase their ability to work and live normal lives and their ability to care for themselves daily

without costing them and their families a fortune to do so. 3D printing is the prosthesis

method of the future and will only continue to get better and become more available as time

goes on.

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