The Helping Hand Project @ UNC

As Design Chair, I have led the introduction of the Innovation Team to develop new and more customizable 3D printable prosthetic hand designs. I have also overseen the production of three custom prosthetic devices for individuals.

First Case

When I first joined Helping Hands at the start of freshman year, we were working on customizing a hand for Tyler, a boy who's favorite colors were red and black. With my background in 3D design, I led the case team in the design iterations to develop the final device. We included fun features for him, including a hidden compartment in the hand and his initials on the back of his hand.

Joe's Prosthetic Finger for Bass Guitar

Joe reached out to the club during my freshman year as he was an avid bass player who recently lost his pointer finger. We began work on a prosthetic device with an application that no other branches of Helping Hands had seen before. This has been a great challenge and Joe has provided amazing feedback for us to complete multiple design iterations and progress towards a functional device for him.

Joining Exec Board as Design Chair

With my design work during my freshman year, I was selected to become the club's Design Chair, overseeing the Design team which focused on designing the devices for active and future cases. I now lead two active case teams and introduced the Innovation Team to continue to develop the next-generation of open source prosthetics.

Innovation Team

Innovation Team is focused on the next steps for open source prosthetic hand design. Using the open source program OpenSCad, we are working on designing a fundamentally different hand from the current model in use. The goal with this program will be to greatly simplify and speed up the process of designing fitting hands, hopfully allowing more people to access this great technology.