Engineers at De Montfort University have found an ingenious and inexpensive way of creating prosthetics. These engineers ground regular plastic bottles down and created polyester yarns from them. They then proceeded to create sockets that join prosthetic limbs to the body.
Through this project, the engineers planned to identify cheaper material that could eventually bring the cost down of an artificial limb. They hope to bring the costs of a prosthetic socket down from £5,000 to £10. Not only that, sockets created from plastic bottles also help combat the plastic pollution problem that has now become a global issue.
Two sockets were made in Leicester, England and trialed on two patients in India who were really impressed by them!
Source: BBC, De Montfort University
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** This post was originally published on https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/2019/08/plastic-bottles-turned-into-cheap-prosthetics.html