2ft Prosthetics - El Salvador 2010

Check out our most recent video that depicts our experience in El Salvador. Huge thanks to FUNTER, FUDEM, and all organizations that helped make our trip a success!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXheUzoCciw

August Newsletter

Sorry about the months of silence. Even though we have not said much on this blog, we have still been very active. This past July we were able to go to El Salvador and fit a few amputees with our leg. The attached newsletter describes this, as well as other activities that we have done.

BYU Weekly | Prosthetics for Poor Countries

The idea of 2ftprosthetics was featured on BYU-TV today. Check it out!

BYU Weekly | Prosthetics for Poor Countries

1st Place - Social Venture Competition

Hooray for the vision of 2ft Prosthetics as it took FIRST PLACE in the Social Venture Competition at BYU (Brigham Young University). For the winning prize the team will receive $10,000 dollars to implement their idea this upcoming summer.Dave and Kay presented the idea on powerpoint in front of their peers and yesterday in front of the judges.
To prove that this prosthetic device works, they had an amputee come and wear it for the crowd to see. It was AWESOME!!
As you can tell by the looks on their faces, they were all excited to see some of their hard work pay off in winning this competition today.Dee Williams and Roland Radack, two of the teams mentors', were both present to support this effort which all team members appreciated. They provide confidence and direction to these individuals in a way that others do not.
Great job 2ft Prosthetics! This is definitely a day to be celebrated!!!.....and first place goes to,.......da, da, dah!,...2FT PROSTHETICS!

Our first clinical trial

We just performed our first clinical trial of the leg yesterday!!! Here are some pics of our test subject wearing our newest leg design:

Our newest design

Here is our newest leg design, which we completed about two weeks ago. Instead of rivets, we used fishing wire to sew the PET (2 liter bottle) socket to the PVC support arms. We also incorporated a shoelace cinching system for loosening/tightening the socket.


Picture 1--The newest leg
Picture 2--Cutting out sole plate out of heated PVC
Picture 3--The socket sew in with fishing wire

You never knew a soda bottle could be used for a medical device! But here it is, after shaping to the shape of a plaster mold

How to vote for our project to help us go to Haiti and Africa

Vote for our idea on the Dell Social Innovation Competition website!

1) Google search 2ft prosthetics and click on the link for the Dell Social Venture Competition
2) Register (Just your email and a username are required)
3) Click on "Vote Now" at the top of the page
4) Click on the PROMOTE button for "Bringing hope to the lives of amputees one leg at a time" by 2ft Prosthetics

You can help! Thank you!

The sole of the foot

How can the mechanical flexing and the wear and tear of the foot be improved? Add a sole! Here are some pictures of this design.

Facebook Cause

Hi all,
To help in the competitions I started a facebook "cause". It's called: "Help Amputees in Haiti and Uganda!" Feel free to join it and spread it!

Socket Design

I have tried to make a socket out of 4" dia. PVC sewer piping, and here are the results

We have also been testing out a heat-molding socket using a 2 liter bottle. However, I believe that we haven't found the ideal design yet. What other ideas do you guys have for an easy to make, inexpensive socket design?

2ft Prosthetics Video of PVC Feet Test

Good Lookin' Leg

Here is our prototype before and after receiving a fresh coat of paint. She's looking beautiful!

Plaster of Paris casting test

We will test a few casting methods before we're done. This plaster of paris cast was easy to do, and made a good sculpture of my hand. There were heat warnings on the plaster of paris box, so the mold is of a glove and my fingers. Also, it is likely that the latex glove prevented the plaster from filling out the very fingertips. However, you can see where the fingernails go when you look at the positive mold!

Meeting With Roland Radack

A group of us (Carl, Dave, Kay, and Doug) went up to Salt Lake City today to meet with two of our mentors, Roland Radack and Dee Williams.  Roland is the Vice President of Deseret Management Corporation and Dee is the CFO of Deseret Book. They helped us out with our business plan model as we are involved in two competitions, the Social Venture Competition and the Business Plan Competition at BYU.  It was great to be able to hear some of their ideas as they deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis.  They were so willing to help out and show us things that would improve our business model.  
To learn more about Roland Radack, click HERE.I couldn't find anything on Dee but if you want more information, email Dave.
Our purpose for meeting with them was two fold: 1) to get feed back on our business plan and 2) to prepare ourselves to meet with LDS HUmanitarian Services. Unfortunately, LDS Humanitarian Services wants to preview our idea before we are able to present to them, so Roland and Dee talked to us about what we should have in our preview packet for them. They said that now that we have the mechanical testing of the leg almost done, LDS Humanitarian Services will want to see the practical testing of the leg done. We are in need of someone who is a below the knee amputee and is willing to try out the leg for a period of time. If anyone knows of anybody who would be willing, please let us know. That is the next step in our journey.

Prototype

In preparation for the meeting tomorrow with Roland, Dave asked me (Doug) to make a prototype.  Dave did all of the cutting and I did all of the shaping.  The process starts out by putting the cut PVC pieces into the oven at a certain temperature.
The pieces are all so tight together that they have to be melted at the same time and then put inside one another while they are still hot (this step is not shown in the picture).   Before it cooled, I needed to get the pieces into the shape desired.  It was a hard task as the tops of the pieces were like spaghetti and the bottom was solid as a rock.  With a little bit of elbow grease, they finally were in the shape desired.  
I have to use a 2-liter bottle in the top to act as a mold.  The top pieces are very flimsy when hot and have to be molded quickly or they will cool and I would have to stick the whole leg back in the oven.
Everything worked out great the first time.  That doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it is a great night because I can go to bed early!
You can see the four pieces are all touching the floor at the same time.  This helps increase the surface area and thus increases the total force that can be applied to the leg.
I hope someday someone will be able to walk with the use of this prosthesis. We have all spent a lot of time on this and it is exciting to see that we are nearing a final product.

Prep Meeting

We came together as a group today and talked about all of our accomplishments over the holiday break.  It was neat to see all that was done in a short period of time.  

Front Row:  Peter, Carl.  Back Row: Russell, Danny, Dave, Doug

Dave conducted the meeting as the leader of the project.  He also made assignments for all of us to work on in the upcoming weeks.
Doug showed off the blog he created to the group and walked everyone through how to sign in and create posts themselves.

Everyone wanted to see the design idea for the top part of the prosthesis.  Doug had a version of it out in his truck and was able to bring it in and share with everyone.  Everyone seems to agree with the model and we hope that it will also stand up to the rigorous testing that the bottom half withstood.

Global Interest In 2ft Prosthetics!

Something neat I just found out: if you type in uganda prosthetics into a google search, a description of 2ft Prosthetics at dosomething.org will pop up as the 5th search return. I discovered this because Mindy Phung of Stanford University emailed us at the end of December expressing interest in becoming involved in our project. Isn't that exciting?! Let's keep spreading the word!

100,000 Cycles!!

We have reached 100,000 cycles of fatigue testing for the 4 piece foot!! The foot, which was made of PVC pipes of 3/4", 1", 1 1/4", and 1 1/2" diameter, easily endured a loading of 300-350 lbs without a problem.

I designed a preliminary business card we can use until we concur on a final one. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions.
If you'd like a card let Dave or I know- he has card and I have file.

The Four Piece

This is the latest design. We needed something that would be able to withstand the large number of cycles so we decided to add another piece of PVC to the old design. The testing is currently going. We are applying about 300-350 pounds and have ran about 60,000 cycles.
We are still using the bolt to hold things together and it seems to be giving us the support that we need.  The bolt is holding things together well.  We didn't add any stress relieves in this one because of some of the research that was done by a capstone group a year or two ago.  They said that with PVC, there really is no need for stress relievers.

I went in with my family today. My little son Brogan is looking on to see what his dad is up to. He is such a curious little guy and always wants to be in the mix of things.

Doug Wright

LDS Humanitarian Meeting Prep

Hey guys,

I spoke with Roland Radack today about our meeting with the Church Humanitarian group. He would like to meet with us this Friday at 2pm at his office in Salt Lake to discuss what we need to do to prepare for this meeting, and to also go over our business plan. Could any of you guys make it at this time, or would later (3 or 4) on Friday work for you better? Please let me know ASAP.

Dave