Preliminary Design of 3D Printing Prosthetic Hand

Abstract

To ensure the smoothness of working flow on the shop floor, workers need excellent and healthy physical conditions. However, some people with disabilities, especially those who have lost their limbs, will have difficulty carrying out the production-related activities. These problems become the background of this paper to design a prosthetic hand made by 3D printing technique. Nine servo motor units actuate all the joints and Arduino is applied as a microcontroller. This paper mainly discusses the design of the kinematics model in the hand, electrical system, and basic movements produced by this prosthetic hand. In addition, patterns of gripping are analyzed and compared with the 3D design. The use of servo motors in each joint of the prosthetic hand can be an advantage to increase the variety of motion in it compared with the design using a pull-string force system. Finally, this paper proposes the idea of future development of the hand design, to achieve a more versatile motion of each finger.