3D printed prosthetic leg

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Theyā€™re also rather beautiful and look like something straight out of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

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Beautiful like a piece of jewellery, rather than those awkward skin coloured thingies.

Wouldnā€™t the difference in weight and mass between the living limb and the prothesis make things difficult? Seems like one would need to add weight to the exo skeleton somehow.

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Built in booze container? Or a thermos for cold days.

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I wonder about this too. The ā€œbladeā€ prostheses amputee runners useā€“even when they have a unilateral amputationā€“look pretty light. That makes me think that, in the specialized case of competitive athletics, lighter is fine. I still canā€™t escape the thought that the imbalance the light leg looks as though it would produce would swing wrong and make it hard to develop a natural walking rhythm.

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The Behance profile says his name is William, not Adam?

My wife has a wooden leg. She says, the lighter the better. Lightness is only a prolem when you go in the swimming pool and it bobs to the surface.

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This is so elegant that it makes a person want to take up chainsaw jugglingā€¦almost. :wink:

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You also have a lot less leverage with your stump, so lighter might be better.

Interesting. I must have been misimagining the, whatā€¦ kinesthetic recalibrationā€¦ must be a bit different and harder than what I had imagined. That makes this leg cooler than I had initially thought.

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Lots of people are uncomfortable with ā€˜differenceā€™. These limbs really make a positive statement, and are cool enough to lower peoples guard. Wanting to stare instead of not wanting to be caught staring.

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Difference is a big problem with many people, my wife included. They make prosthetic limbs with very lifelike skin, but itā€™s still an uncanny valley effect. Iā€™d rather see the guts of the mechanical stuff, myself. Itā€™s interesting.

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Laser laser-sintering services cost a ton. Just how expensive are traditional prosthetic limbs if this is the cheaper option?

On a side note, iā€™d go with the peg leg with detachable rum container.

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Speaking of which, I wonder how the hollow nature of this 3d printed one would affect thee ability to swim.

What about the Cherry Darlingā€™s leg from the Planet Terror movie? That one was pretty badass.

If we merge the titanium printing with weapon engineering, it is not that impossible anymoreā€¦ (Though using the barrel as a weight-bearing component is not exactly a recipe for maintaining accurate fire across the weaponā€™s lifespan.)

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It would add complexity and weight, and potentially reduce the bad-assitude; but youā€™d ideally want the load bearing element to be a ā€˜sleeveā€™(either a tube or an open frame) slightly longer than the barrel, with the ballistic bits on a suitably damped mount(maybe even active recoil compensation, if we are splurging here) within the weight bearing prosthesis.

Definitely that. Also, a protective cap at the end of the barrel, to be flipped off just before shooting, is called for in order to avoid dirt entering the barrel if e.g. walking through mud. (For a disposable solution, to be replaced after shooting, a condom can be used. Soldiers in desert environments routinely employ this trick to protect their guns.)

Active recoil compensation, now weā€™re getting fancy. I like! :smiley:

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Also, just to make the point. A proper stiletto instead of a K-Bar for the bayonet?

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Tens of thousands of dollars.

Not terribly useful. This is visually striking, but I donā€™t see the cost reduction or any improvement in function.

Merely scanning the intact leg and making an exoskeletal prosthesis (plus scanning the residual limb to create a socket) does not handle dynamic alignment. The dynamic socket fit for residual limb, and the dynamic alignment for walking are the expensive labor-intensive parts of creating a prosthesis. To walk smoothly, itā€™s quite likely that the truncated bones in the residual limb need to be aligned differently than their original alignments. Just as your foot and ankle change in volume during the day, a residual limb changes a bit in response to work. The designer who created this has not mentioned that you donā€™t make the prosthesis exactly the same circumference as the intact limb - you make it .5 - 1 inch smaller, to make it easier to don and doff trousers.

One reason that endoskeletal protheses are now popular is that the alignment can be adjusted - exoskeletal limbs are static. I had a bunch of fiberglas exoskeletal limbs from 1971 - 1985. There is a reason why I switched to endoskeletal when they became available for me.

There is no facility for comments at the behance designerā€™s website.

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