DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF A PARAMETRIC 3D-PRINTED PASSIVE PROSTHETIC HAND BASED ON ANTHROPOMETRIC FEATURES

Abstract

People with upper-limb reductions or amputations need prosthetic replacements throughout their lives as they grow and change. The standard method of prosthetic development takes a lot of time for fabrication by technicians and requires expert designers for patient-specific customizations. This can cause significant hardships for patients living in remote regions. Furthermore, many high-functional electric-powered prostheses are expensive and beyond the affordability of a large segment of users. Additionally, they require experts for maintenance whose availability maybe limited. To address these issues, a parametric 3D-printed passive upper-limb prosthesis design is proposed in this thesis. The parameters are based on few anthropometric features from the healthy hand that can be easily measured. Since polymer-based 3D printing has become popular and affordable, low-cost rapid fabrication of custom designs is no longer challenging. The prosthetic hand model is made using state-of-the-art 3D parametric modeling software. Seven anthropometric features are used as input for the generation of the custom model: palm length, wrist diameter and circumference, middle finger length and circumference, and metacarpal circumference and diameter. The fabricated passive prosthetic hand can perform up to 31 grasps.