3D Printing Creates Low-Cost Prosthetic Hands for Children

Researchers at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation are planning to use 3D printer technology to create low-cost artificial hands and fingers for pediatric patients.

Youngsters quickly outgrow their custom-fitted prosthetics. According to Selena Silva, M.D., interim medical director of Carrie Tingley Hospital, a basic claw-type prosthetic hand can cost from $700 to $10, 000 to make. Growing children need a new device every 6 to 12 months.

According to Rosalie Rayburn, a staff writer for the Albuquerque Journal, prosthetics produced by a 3D printer could bring the basic cost of producing one down to less than $200. Carrie Tingley Hospital serves more than 300 pediatric patients who need an arm or hand prosthesis because of a congenital defect or amputation. So far, she reports, they have created about seven prototype hands that they are now testing.

“The first phase is for us to investigate different configurations of the hand and different orientations for the fingers to make sure that we can actually simulate a human hand, ” said Christina Salas, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of UNM Orthopaedics Biomechanics & Biomaterials Laboratory. She said that the next phase will be mechanical testing to determine strength, flexibility and grasp force. The force needed to hold a plastic bottle of water is different from that needed to hold a hammer, she noted.

Because the 3D printed prosthetics are mechanically activated, the wearers must flex muscles of their existing limbs to move the fingers. Salas estimates that, using a 3D printer, the researchers will be able to create a workable prosthetic hand for between $150 and $200. They hope to begin testing it next year.