Team 14

3D Prosthetics: Wrist Prosthetic Hand for Non-Profit Use

Team Members: Valerie Cortez, David Francisco, Megan Hiruko, William Sweeten - SBHSE

Team Mentors: Dr. Anoop Grewal - Fulton Schools of Engineering, ASU
Aniruddh Nayak - The CORE Institute & The MORE Foundation

YouTube Link: View the video link below before joining the zoom meeting

Zoom Link: https://asu.zoom.us/j/94070723910

Abstract

Children who have partial hand deformities need constant resizing of prosthetics due to a child’s growth and purchasing new prosthetics can be expensive over time. Additionally, the more functional prosthetics are, the more expensive they can be due to their intricate and convenient features. Helping Hands within the More Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides 3-D printed, body movement controlled partial prosthetic hands for children. The size of the parts are generated from a software, OpenSCAD, with the input being the child’s arm measurements. The project completed by 3-D Prosthetics was to update the device according to the patient needs that the current model was not satisfying. These needs included the ability to provide more degrees of freedom to the thumb, the ability to close the hand by extension, as well as flexion, and replace current joint method with a longer lasting solution. Over the past year, the team was able to address these issues to form a final Capstone Project. The thumb was given an attached pinwheel part that can be manually adjusted to change its position. The orthodontist bands that acted as joints were replaced by torsion springs that were proven to last longer than the original method that needed replacement every few weeks. Additionally, the team set out to connect a myoelectric sensor, as well as an Arduino, to add the ability of controlling the hand pressure of the prosthetic according to the arm muscle movement of the patient. The software for determining the sizing of the hand was also improved because it had been giving incorrect measurements.

Video: