It's All in the Wrist

I really have to start taking better "before" pictures so you can really appreciate how much work went into what you are currently looking at in this stage of making this orthosis.  This next project is a wrist driven orthosis - a ratchet design that is never used anymore, but operates by using wrist extension (bending your wrist back) to cause the first two fingers and thumb to make a pinching motion.  When the wrist is relaxed from extension into flexion, the fingers open and the pinching grasp releases.  This is great for someone who still has the extensor muscles present in their forearm, but cannot fully use their fingers.  It allows them to pick up objects, grasp things, and even write.

We were given a bag full of pieces of straight metal and a lot of rivets and screws and expected to create this device.  So, what you are looking at in the above picture is about 10 hours of metal bending work at its finest :)  The two big metal pieces were both straight and had to be bent and fit to my patient.  They had to be cut and trimmed down and smoothed - it was a very long process...made even longer by having to share the machines with 16 other people.

After getting these two pieces bent correctly and attached to each other, I then had to create the finger pieces for the brace.  Originally, looking at the finger pieces, this did not seem like it was going to be a huge obstacle.  Wrong!!  The first part of the finger pieces is bending three tiny metal strips to circle around the top half of the fingers.  I thought bending metal around a forearm was super tough.  Bending metal around the width of two fingers is brutal!  It is a very tedious task to try and make these tiny, tight bends.  The finger piece of the wrist driven orthosis has to be just right in order to keep the device on and functioning and comfortable.

This is what the finger piece looks like when it is all said and done.  Tiny bent metal and a tiny bent rod holding it all together.  This piece was made for my partner so it does not fit exactly right on me, but it shows what I spent 4 hours creating.  The metal bending was the tricky part, but then we got to solder the metal to hold it all together and that was very exciting!  And very scary!  I have become accustomed to using blow torches at school, but not in this way!  We typically just use them to get some plastic warm and mold it a little bit, not to melt silver and drip it onto metal in order to fuse it together.  This was my first time soldering and although I got the hang of it rather quickly, it was quite intense and (on par with all the new things I am learning at school) somewhat stressful.

But let's be honest, I look pretty cool wielding a torch and obviously it brings a smile to my face.  Fine, I will give soldering another chance!  Melting things is typically frowned upon so it was fun to be told that this was part of the process.

I was able to get the finger piece completed and walk away from the wrist driven device for the day.  Staring at pieces of bendable metal for 9 hours in one day really just makes you want to throw it out the window.  I cannot believe this project still has two more days of fabrication before it will be done!!  No wonder they do not make these in practice anymore, it is not practical to have to spend 25 hours working on one orthotic device.  That, and it looks like it came out of the stone ages!!  No one wants to wear a purely metal contraption on their arm...well, maybe not no one, but I know for me it does not work with my gold jewelry :)