Amputee develops 3D printing finger for himself

Because he wasn’t happy with the available options on the market, he took action.

“I’ve always been a tinkerer, so first thought in the hospital was that I could build myself something interesting, as I had heard about 3D printed prosthetics before. I glanced at available options but wasn’t terribly impressed with it came down to it, especially for those of us missing two knuckles. Buying one? What fun would that be?! The after market devices offered by most doctors were silly silicone contraptions that didn’t move or function.”

After doing some research, Nick found the original Owen Replacement Finger design, which inspired him to come up with the Knick Finger, after creating different versions.
He built it from scratch, using OpenScad code and printed it out on his Printrbot Simple.

Being inspired by the e-NABLE Community, he has also released the design into the open source community under a Creative Commons license so that others can create these fingers as well.

“I’d read articles about e-NABLE, which led me to thingiverse where I found the Owen Finger. Getting started was the hardest part and his design gave me something to get off the ground and iterate on as I started grasping all of the necessary concepts. My 1.0 verison was a mashup of that finger with adapted parts from Flexy hand. It was a big milestone because once I had something I could start wearing, I could start thinking of a lot of little improvements”, he explained.

More info: http://enablingthefuture.org/the-knick-finger/

Adapted from: http://enablingthefuture.org/2016/05/02/knickfinger/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6F8aj2A8MY