I have a pretty big project ahead of me designing an arm that would get me back on a motorbike. Its close to initial testing, so watch out for that. Cost for the proposed motorbike arm is a little high, so I'll have to double down on paying work.

In the meantime, I'm improving the socket used with my residual limb. Looking to improve my shifts in my car. Currently, with the now 2-year-old socket design, getting fifth and second gear can be hard work. I imagine that this wouldn't be such a big issue if my injury wasn't a brachial plexus injury. I just don't have quite enough strength in some ranges of movement yet.

So, a new socket was required. This time I leveraged 3D Scanning to generate a base part to model the socket from. This little exercise is a testament to how easy the Einscan Pro+ is to use as I had my Dad scan my stump. All over in less than five minutes and the scan data was impressive. I'll spare you all the grisly detail and not share the original scan data - the doctors put in a lot of effort to save the arm and whats left has some impressive scars.

Scan data was imported directly to Autodesk Inventor and the mesh point projected to an array of sketch planes. A raw (ugly) loft feature was then carried through to the socket design shown.

A quick and dirty PLA print proved to be a nice fit. I'm really happy with both the fit and the fact the "free play" is greatly reduced, but it's yet to be tested. This will mean drilling out the carbon fiber tube and assembling a new "hand" from spares. Over the weekend maybe.