Professor Rick Neptune and his mechanical engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin demonstrate in this video how they're paving the way for more customized prosthetics and orthotic devices for injured soldiers.
Watch the video below.
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Transcript
00:00:02 these are images of modern warfare lives forever alter in just a few of the 1,500 US soldiers who've lost limbs during the Iraqi Afghanistan conflict on the UT campus professor Rick Neptune in a group of mechanical engineering students offer hope and a chance for normalcy through a pre-existing process called selective laser simple selective laser sintering was developed here at UT and it was
00:00:32 mostly for prototype parts for companies dr. Neptune saw that opportunity to actually use it in the medical industry and only recently has it started to be used for actual functional parts that we're putting on patients so here's our outline for today in lab number two we focus on the muscle modeling when I first came here to UT there is it a avoid I'm out there for you know two
00:00:54 terms of prosthetic components the commercial feet that available come in fix sizes and so we realize that each amputee is different and we had this great technology to generate subject-specific custom prosthetic devices and help improve the quality of life for lower limb amputees it starts with designing a device that you want to have built with that 3d model that
00:01:20 you've created you compile the parts together in an arrangement until machine this is what I want you to build this 3d design so this is the set of this is the graphical representation of exactly what is in that machine right now already built we just finished our bill and layer by layer powder is rolled over the bill chamber and then a laser actually traces out a layer of the design that
00:01:42 you'd like to create then you can take that build out of the SLS machine and you break it out so you kind of feel a little bit like an archaeologist where you're brushing away the powder and cleaning off the parts and you have your prototypes inspiring encouraging and if we can help one individual then it makes all the years of work that we've done worthwhile
