Ehlers-danlos syndrome Flexible Ring Splints - #AssistiveTech

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A good friend of mine has Ehlers-danlos syndrome. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) comprises a group of inherited heterogeneous disorders that share a common decrease in the tensile strength and integrity of the skin, joints, and other connective tissues. For her, one of the ways this manifests itself is hyper-extension of her fingers that causes painful swelling. One day she showed me some ring-splints that she could buy on line, but they where VERY expensive and I thought... Wait a minute... I can print that... So, here are my Ehlers-danlos ring-splints that she wears now every day. A complete set for her costs about 1$ worth of flexible filament and takes 15 min to print. I'm working on how to make this a customizer app so it's easier for others to make ones that fit them, but I have found that just scaling these up or down in your printing software works well. She has been wearing them for a few weeks now, and they apparently work very well. Going to be making her a new slightly smaller set as well as they are fitting a bit lose now due to her swelling going down. I hope these can help more people out there as well! The pictures here are of my friend wearing her splints after the final fitting (pictures used with her permission). Print Settings Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: .1 Infill: 100% Notes: I used Makerbot flexible PLA to print these. I'm ordering some other flexible filament types to experiment with as well. I print the first layer at 1/2 normal speed and 85% first layer height to help bed adhesion How I Designed This I designed this by taking measurements of my friend's hand with a digital caliper and making some prototypes in Autodesk 123D. After coming up with a stable, easily printable version that worked well, I made a few sets for my friend, and we adjusted to fit her fingers just right so they where both not too tight, and did not get in the way, but prevented her fingers from hyper-extending. I have included my prototype test files (mostly built to fit my, very large hands) If I win this contest, I would hope I could get some guidance on how to make the customizer version of this to make them easily sizeable.