Jon Kuniholm
President, Shared Design Alliance Open Prosthetics Project
http://tackledesign.com
http://openprosthetics.org

We have submitted a grant application to Changemakers
(http://www.changemakers.org/index4.htm ), proposing to complete what we are calling the Open Fulfillment Initiative. The basic idea is that open source designs or ideas unencumbered by intellectual property rights need a mechanism for being delivered to the consumer.

We'd like to remove the middleman from the process, giving the consumer (prosthetist, in most cases) direct access to all of the inputs of a product. One of
those inputs could be the warranty and maintenance that is expected with higher end products, which could be offered by a traditional manufacturer. In this way, once the infrastructure is established, the marginal cost of producing the product could be reduced to the sum of the inputs. We plan on developing this process by using the Trautman Hook as a pilot project. Because the number of comments appears to reflect interest in the idea, we would appreciate it if you could register and comment on our application:
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/1257


The Trautman Hook is still a work in progress. We have made four prototypes, all of which were donated to amputees for test and evaluation. Using the feedback that we get from them, we hope to complete a redesign and release another limited run by the end of the summer. Based on the feedback that we have gotten so far, we realize that we have replicated some design defects of the original, and have some challenges to overcome related to the specific material that we have used in the first prototypes.


Thanks again for all of your interest and support of the project.