Staff Writer
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| The Dextrus hand |
A
single prosthetic hand usually costs the National Health Service upwards of
$100,000, but a British inventor hopes to revolutionize the industry with his
fully functional Dextrus hand. What sets the Dextrus apart is that it is
produced using a 3-D printer, and could cost under $1,000. The 3-D printers
themselves can cost as little as $200, but the higher-end printers required to
print off a prosthetic limb cost upwards of $3,000.
Robotics
expert Joel Gibbard, 23, says the device works just like a human hand, with 3-D
printed plastic parts working as bones and rubber coating as skin. Electric
motors replace muscles, and steel cables are substituted for tendons. The hand,
which is made from the same material as Lego blocks and can be printed off in
as little as eight hours, can articulate each finger individually, enabling the
prosthetic to hold objects of different sizes and shapes.
In
an interview with the Daily Mail, Gibbard,
an engineering graduate from Plymouth University, said, “The motivation for
this was seeing really advanced prosthetics. They’re very expensive so I
thought I would create one using my robotics experience and a 3-D printer. Money
is not my goal with this; I want to make it more accessible for amputees.” Gibbard
has elected to make the whole project open source, meaning there are no patents
on it and everything is published online. This means that anyone has the right
to use his coding and print off their own 3-D hands. He hopes to finish
development in one year and have the Dextrus on sale within 15 months.
The
hope is that 3-D printing technology will be able to produce limbs for all people
in need of them, while retaining a relatively inexpensive price. Scott Summit,
the founder of Bespoke Innovations, a company specializing in the production of
prosthetic limbs, has been researching 3-D printed prosthetics for six years.
Summit has been labeled the definitive expert in the field of 3-D printed
prosthetics, and he says we can create a prosthetic limb with an iPhone and a
3-D printer. “I would like to see the creation of a prosthetic limb to be a
viral app that’s usable by everyone,” he says in an interview with The Atlantic.
Manufacturing
prosthetic limbs using 3-D printing would not only be more cost effective, but
offer a higher level of customization of the models, and it allows for more
trial and error in the creation process, since it makes prototyping swift and
easy.
However,
there are problems with 3-D printed limbs as well. The biggest issue it faces
is the connection to the body, which is usually made via a plaster mold that
captures the geometry of the stump. High end laser body scanners could likely
do this work and aid in making prototypes for 3-D printers to then print off,
but they are few and far between and are not cheap.
If
3-D printing is truly the future of prosthetic limbs, then it will need to find
a cost effective way to produce perfectly fitting joints and parts.
