Introducing a Completely New Prosthetic Design

Jordan is exhausted after a full day of sharing her invention story to the media during Kid Inventors Day at NYU’s MakerSpace. She had a chance to spray glitter live on Good Morning New York and so many other members of the media, young and old.

But there was one brand new reveal that I am very excited to share with you. Jordan was able to reveal the result of her work with her prosthetist, David Rotter. You might recall she spent an intense and really productive day with Dave back in September. During that visit, Jordan learned a lot about what it takes to build a test socket and talked through her design vision with Dave. A big part of that vision came with that ability to merge a traditional prosthetic arm with 3D printed attachments. Jordan is proud she had a chance to learn about failure during her #ProjectUnicorn work. She couldn’t figure out a way her elbow-free arm could work with the cool 3D hands that come from the open source community of Enable and Enable Community Foundation.

Wait no more!

Introducing the first and hopefully not the last mashup of a traditional arm and 3D printed attachments that can make it possible for Jordan to wear prosthetics and build out fun 3D-printed design concepts!
Yes, that’s a traditional prosthetic arm where Jordan is able to control the elbow and the hand motion using a shoulder harness. (A figure-9 harness for those who are into that technical information.) Jordan is able to lock and unlock the elbow using a pull-string. It’s a style of locking and unlocking that Jordan has used with arms in the past and she is a natural using it.

Here’s how it works… Jordan and her design partner, Sam Hobish, worked on creating a 3D printed arm back in April of last year. Jordan LOVED that hand and even went to school wearing it. But she and Sam couldn’t figure out a way to use current 3D printed designs to work with Jordan’s arm. So she took that arm to Dave at Scheck and Siress where they brainstormed solutions.

Dave was able to take a standard screw used to allow a user to switch between different prosthetic hands. He attached it to the 3D hand and found an ingenious way to use strings to attach the hand to a traditional arm.

That string solution also allows Jordan to attach additional hands to the arm including a standard hook that gives Jordan a lot more fine motor skills than any other body-powered hand that she’s used.

But wait… there’s one more surprise for Jordan and her new arm! She also has a fun pirate hook. She loved the idea of being silly with her arm because why not! As she’s learned through this past year, you should take advantage of your differences and have fun with it.

Silly, but awesome at the same time. Jordan was thrilled to have the chance to show off the arm to the media and we hope this is just the beginning of finding more ways to create affordable and fun attachments for kids (and adults) using traditional prosthetics.