Mano Libre - The Rapid Hybrid Prosthetic Forearm by dianasvea

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

The Mano Libre solves the problem of resource scarcity in prosthetics clinics around the world, especially in the developing world where 80% of amputees live. It was conceptualized, designed, executed, and delivered to a patient in 48 hours by a team of engineers and prosthetists in rural Guatemala.
The Mano Libre:

is a standarized, cheap forearm piece to be used in a upper extremity prosthesis. It attaches directly to the elbow on the upper end, and directly to the wrist on the lower end


will drastically reduces the time it takes to construct an upper extremity prosthesis


uses less than $10 in raw materials to construct, making it much cheaper than the traditional method of fabrication

is much lighter and therefore easier to manipulate than traditional models
Traditionally, this component is fabricated by creating a cardboard tube to fill with plaster to make a mold of this piece. The mold is modified by a prosthetist before a sheet of plastic is heated and pulled over the mold. The plastic then cools, is cut off of the mold with an air saw, and then ground to size and smoothed.