Kinetic Arm

According to the World Health Organisation, currently 90% of the global population who need assistive technology cannot access or afford it.

At Free 3D Hands, we believe in a world where assistive technology is accessible to everyone.

Free 3D Hands is an Australian charity that designs and provides high-quality, low-cost assistive devices for people with upper limb differences, completely free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world. We even pay the postage.

We share all of our designs under open-source licenses, enabling people worldwide to create and repair their own devices. This approach not only democratises access to assistive technology but also encourages further innovation in this field.

The Kinetic Arm is our gift to the world, driven by the hope of creating equal access to assistive technology for all. It is through global collaboration that we can create an exponential impact.

Sharing of the Kinetic Arm design under an open-source license is a milestone made possible by the unwavering of our incredible community.

Free 3D Hands is a charitable research and design organisation that relies entirely on donations to continue our mission. We are deeply grateful to our corporate sponsors, philanthropic ers, community groups, and ongoing, one-time and anonymous donors. Your generosity and belief in our vision has enabled our dedicated team to devote over 4,000 hours over the past 2.5 years to developing the Kinetic Arm, as well as the assembly manual and instructional video over the last 4 months.

Thank you for believing in our vision and for helping us bring the Kinetic Arm to life.

The Kinetic Arm is a body-powered device, and is designed to be used by people with trans-radial arm differences, with a functioning elbow to open and close the fingers of the device. The wrist can also rotate into multiple grasp positions.

The included 247 page Kinetic Arm Assembly Manual has been developed by our engineering team to be as visual as possible. Each section of the manual links to a Kinetic Arm Assembly Tutorial Video on YouTube to share all of our assembly techniques.

The Kinetic Arm Assembly Tutorial Video can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC6OgWWjTK8

If you have any questions regarding the Kinetic Arm or the Kinetic Arm Assembly Manual, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at Free 3D Hands. We would also love to add your Kinetic Arm makes to our Collaborators Wall in the Free 3D Hands Design Centre. Please email us your questions/photos to [email protected]. We would love to see how you are changing the world, one arm at a time.

The Kinetic Arm design is being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) open-source license to encourage further innovation in this field, and improve global access to assistive technology.
This design is released for trial and evaluation purposes only, and is intended to benefit certain individuals with specific trans-radial arm differences and is not intended, and shall not be used, for commercial purposes.
The acceptance of this design by Free 3D Hands Ltd, and any such information provided by the design team is presented as is without representation or warranties of any kind, express or implied, and is intended to be a free gift to recipients for the sole purpose of evaluating various design iterations, ideas and modifications. The Kinetic Arm must be used for only light tasks such as picking and placing of small objects, and not for any tasks that could be considered dangerous. Any individual associated with Free 3D Hands Ltd shall not be liable for any injuries or damages resulting from the use of any information or designs provided. The Kinetic Arm is experimental, is not classified as a medical device, and is for evaluation purposes only. In some cases, these devices will not be appropriate for each individual, and consultation with allied health professionals must be sought and obtained before use.

Part-specific print settings are detailed in the assembly manual included in the files.

If your slicer software accepts .STEP files, we recommend ing and using these. Only use the .STL files when .STEP files are not accepted by the slicer software.