The Project
The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and freely sharing the designs. This project is an open source collaboration between users, designers and funders with the goal of making our creations available for anyone to use and build upon. Our hope is to use this and our complementary sites to create a core group of “lead users,” and to speed up and amplify the impact of their innovations in the industry.
Our current list of active projects is available on the wiki. Please contribute or suggest your own. The most up to date blog entries and contributions by our members are available on our social network.
You can help!
We can’t do the best possible job without people with diverse skill sets and backgrounds; we need your help.
Be a user: Do you have an amputation or limb deficiency? Help us test our prosthetic ideas by using them in your daily life and/or suggesting modifications.
Be a donor: We need money to pay for prototyping and keep the lights on! Find out how you can donate.
Be a grant writer: Do you have experience writing and receiving grants? Help us secure long-term funding.
Be our legal team: Do you provide legal services related to intellectual property? Help us make sure that our designs stay in the public domain.
Be a service provider: Do you provide machining, rapid prototyping, or casting services? We need your help turning our models into working prototypes. You can also help us by fulfilling orders for prosthetic parts when our designs are usable.
Be a researcher: Can you read through vast quantities of technical information and pull out the interesting stuff? Do you have expertise with the US patent system? We can use your skills to find answers to technical questions and find existing solutions to our problems.
Or maybe you have some other skills or advice we could use. Please contact us right away!