Gerwin Smit: 3D-Printing of artificial limbs: successes and challenges

The advance of additive manufacturing, or 3D-printing, has drastically changed the world of design and manufacturing, and is also changing the field of prosthetics and orthotics. This innovative production technique offers an unprecedented freedom, to produce complex shapes and structures, and to print mechanisms fully assembled. Additive manufacturing democratizes production, and allows for the production of fully individualized products.

Still, there are significant challenges to be solved, when it comes to large-scale application of 3D-printing in the field of prosthetics, especially in low resource settings. This talk will address some of these challenges and will share practical experience. It will show recent successes, in the development of 3D-printed prosthetic terminal devices, and it will provide an outlook to future developments. What further developments can we expect? Where will 3D-printing bring our field?

 

Gerwin Smit B Eng (2005) MSc (2008) received a Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (2013), on his research towards the development of world’s lightest prosthetic hand, the ‘Delft Cylinder Hand’. In 2014 he worked at the Sensory-Motor-Systems Lab, at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, on a new prosthetic knee that assists people in standing up. In 2010, he was co-founder of the company Delft Prosthetics and produced, amongst others, the Wilmer Open Socket.

He currently is an assistant professor at the Department of BioMechanical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. He was awarded with a prestigious Dutch VENI research-grant in 2016, for a project on the development of a hybrid powered upper limb prosthesis. His research includes application of 3D-printing for prosthetics, medical devices and developing countries. He developed the ‘Hundred Dollar Hand’, currently produced in India and the self-grasping ‘mHand’, currently produced in The Netherlands.

He initiated ‘Project Inspiration’ and developed a mechanical ventilator, that can be produced anywhere in the world, based on a model from the 60’s he borrowed from the Boerhaave Museum. Dr. Smit serves as a board member of ‘ISPO The Netherlands’ and is a referee for various journals and conferences.

 

Personal pages:

https://www.bitegroup.nl/people/gerwin-smit

https://www.tudelft.nl/en/staff/g.smit

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerwin-Smit

https://www.projectinspiration.nl