3D PRINTING PROSTHETICS

Technical skills involved in this project

Mechanical: SolidWorks, Fusion360, 3D Printing

Soft Skills: Leadership, Communication, Team bonding, Teamwork, stakeholder engagement, presentation

PROJECT SUMMARY

I am the technical R&D lead on a 3D Printing Prosthetics Team. Our team consists of 14 Univeristy of Toronto Engineering students from different backgrounds, including Mechcanical, Electrical, Materials and Robotics Engineering. We mostly engage with 2 non profit organization: NIA and Enabling the future (ENABLE). NIA primarily works on below the knee prosthetics and ENABLE works with upper limb prosthetics.

Projects with NIA:

We have partnered with NIA Technologies to develop a 3D printed socket that can be integrated with commercially available locks. Traditionally, prostheticians need to create a mold and then laminated on that mold to create a socket which can be securely integrate with the locking mechanisms. However, these devices typically cost more than 10k USD, which are not viable in low income countries where NIA Technologies operate. My team researched 10+ different commercially available locks to be integrated to the socket, shortlisted 3 designs, presented to the NIA Technologies’ CEO and incoporated his feedback into our requirements for the socket. We also designed a full test plan for the socket and we are currently running ANSYS simulation to achieve the most optimal socket design.

Projects with ENABLE:

We have partnered with ENABLE to help recipients in Uganda to modify an existing upper limb prosthetics (NIOP upper limb design). We used OpenSCAD to rescale the original design and we fixed more than 10 different design parts to make sure the arm fit with the recipient. The arm was test printed, built and shipped to the recipient.

We are also currently working with Enable Team in California and Uganda stakeholders to continue develop the NIOP arms to make sure the design is scalable to recipients of different builds as well as working to make sure devices are suitable to wear for both male and female recipients.

We are also working with Enable Ottawa and other stakeholders in Ontario to help recipients in needs of upper limb devices.

NIA project development

We came up with 3 potential candidate design and option 2 was chosen to move on to the next iterative stage.

The test plan was closely referenced ISO: 10328:2016.

The test plan consists of Static Structual Analysis and Dynamic Load Analysis.

Static Structual Test includes: Axial Compression Testing

Dynamic Load Analysis includes: Model walking motion in ANSYS to simulate walking gait forces (heel strike, mid-stance and toe-off)

Images at the side are referenced from studies, we will create similar test mock up.

ENABLE project development

We referenced the existing NIOP design, modify the design to fit recipient and created test prints, test build, final print and a final build. We have successfully send the assembly to Uganda.