3D Printed Prosthetic Arm Update

It’s been a long time since I designed and 3D printed my first bionic arm design. In fact, it was all the way back in 2014 when I was in my final year of University. I never would have thought almost 10 years later some people would still be interested in it.

I made a short video showing the arm operating at the end of 2014, this was actually my first YouTube video. Several years went by and I was receiving regular messages from people asking for more details about the design and how it works. In 2017 one night I decided I was tired of responding to the same questions all the time so decided to record myself talking about the system and how I went about designing it. I really didn’t prepare any kind of script or plan for that video and I suppose I was a bit nervous trying to recall every bit of critical information which led to a lot of “ums” and “ahs” during the video.

Regardless, I think people (mostly engineering students) found some value from the video. However the next wave of emails and messages started shortly after…

This time people were asking for my design files and after enough requests I decided to share the files openly online. However, as several years went by a lot of messages were coming in with specific questions relating to specific parts and/or the assembly. In 2020 I decided to make this website and sell the files for a small fee. I figured that I had been spending quite a bit of time helping people with questions about my design for many years at that point and if I charged a small fee I could at least use that money to fund future projects which may continue to provide some value to engineering students.

Thank you to anyone who has purchased any files and helped support my work.

I visited my Dad’s home recently which is were my old printed design has been sitting all these years. The wrist which was a weak point seems to have finally broken internally but all else it still seems relatively in tact.