Creating The Foot

It is imperative to have a prosthetist on hand to ensure that the patients needs are taken care of. There is so much that goes into the comfort of the prosthetic and the anatomy of the person's residual limb that our knowledge is limited to care for those needs.

Julio Fuentes (shown below) is showing us several important indicators on a person's residual limb and marking them on the cast.

After the cast has been made the mold must be modified. We added plaster in several areas as well as removed plaster to ensure a proper fit of the socket. They taught us a new technique that eliminated the leather strap we currently use. This socket extends beyond the knee and and applies pressure above the knee keeping the prosthetic from falling off.

I wish I could remember the amount of PVC pipe we initially purchased. I can only say it was A LOT!! We ran out with several legs left to manufacture so ISA Director, Julie and assistant Prosthetist Luky went to buy some more.

We use an oven to make the pvc pipe moldable. Here we have several legs being manufactured at the same time.

This was my work station for a week. We took the pvc pipe from the oven to here, to shape them.

Once they were completely assembled to the right size they were spray painted brown.

Walah! Our finished product!

Our invention has come a long way from 2 years ago! We originally wanted to use 2 liter bottles to act as a socket but when we found out how complicated the socket portion of the prosthetic portion was,....back to the drawing board we went by consulting with various prosthetists which enabled us to engineer our current design. We're excited for this upcoming school year as we have students from BYU who are continuing to research and develop this current design to improve life span, strength, and feasibility.