Welcome to the PrusaHand opensource project!

My name is Jenik and on this site you can find all the information I have gained since April 2015. That was the time I chose to build a prosthetic hand.

My background is electrical and biomedical engineering and last couple of years I was intrigued by DIY. I could spend hours and hours of watching youtube videos about woodworking, 3D printing, metal working, arduino projects and more.

When I moved abroad I have discovered I have plenty of time outside of work on my hands. I always knew I wanted to build a prosthetic hand, afterall I grew up in the 90’s and I was influenced by movies such as Robocop, Star Wars, Starship troopers and other movies with severed limbs.

I have seen couple of videos about 3D printed hands and decided to buy myself a 3D printer. When you have a 3D printer you get tired of printing other people’s models really soon. So I downloaded 123D Design and began create my first models. Later on I switched to Fusion 360.

I wanted my prosthetic hand to be myoelectrical – controled by muscles (there is a great video on youtube starring Robert Downey Jr.), so I got myself a soldering Iron and an arduino starter kit.

All that time I was in touch with Prusa Research company from whom I had the printer and they supported me all along with their technical know-how, filaments, contacts and even a spare printer. That’s why after I have designed my first hand I named it after them.

My wish is that with this project you can find some inspiration to build your own project (it doesn’t have to be necessarily a proshetic hand :-)), because even though I had some background from earlier, Google and Youtube were my best friends. In this era of affordable electronics, easy to use microprocessors and 3d printers and global knowledge share is a pitty not to create stuff!

 

My first attempt to create myoelectric prosthesis:

 

Second test:

 

First succesfull prototype:

 

PrusaHand first test:

 

PrusaHand expo design: