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Building Prosthetic Hands for Kids

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Hi, My Name is Steve Bloom and welcome to my GoFundMe site.  I have had the pleasure of working with children with misshapen hands and fingers.  In fact, some of the kids don’t have fingers at all.  According to the CDC, 1500 babies per year will be born with upper limb deficiencies in the USA every year ( http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/ul-limbreductiondefects.html ). Many of these children have no way of getting prosthetics to help them out with their daily needs.  You see most prosthetics can cost thousands upon thousands of dollars.  There are many kids that don’t even have insurance and for the ones that do , the insurance companies make it near impossible to get the prosthetics they need.    And many more thousands of children will be hurt in accidents as well every year.  ( http://www.aboutonehandtyping.com/statistics.html )


I have gotten to make these hands help kids with basic day to day activities. They work reasonably well, they are cool to look at, and the kids love them and need them.  In fact every time we make a hand we work with the children to let them decide on the color of the hand and the fingers so it becomes individualized for them.  They just love how the hands help with daily activates.  As with and prosthetics, as the children grows, we get to make the hands over and over again to keep up with their growing bodies.  It is very rewarding.


The 3d printed parts do break down from daily usage. There is always a need to replace parts or the entire hands in some cases.  The plastic can break, split or chip from all of the rigorous use of a child especially in many kinds of sports. And finally the parts take a long time to print.  It takes between eight and ten hours to print a 3D prosthetic hand as well as another one to two hours to assemble it.

I am currently trying to raise 2,500 dollars.  This money will allow me bring the prosthetic hands to the next level.  I am currently working on developing the hands out of carbon fiber.  This carbon fiber will be cut out of new CNC machine that I am currently working on.  With the money that you help fund, I will be able to finish the machine and buy lots of carbon fiber sheets.  This will allow me to finish up my design work for the new hands and start to make the new hands for the children.  And the best part will be the manufacturing time.  It should go down to one to two hours to mill the part and only one hour for assembly.  This will really increase how fast we can get the prosthetics to the kids.


So, please help if you can.  Give one dollar if you like or as much as you can.  The money will be used for an important need.  The kids are in need and I would really like to make a huge difference in their lives.  

  Thanks Steven Bloom
 

Organizer

Steve Bloom
Organizer
Ashburn, VA

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