12-10-2019, 10:21 PM
1
Plastic limbs
Not sure if this should be in Health, or Science?I have read that Engineers at De Montfort Uni in Leicester, have discovered they can grind down plastic bottles into a powder that looks much like sugar. They can then turn this powder into strings of polyester like there is in a lot of our clothing.
Instead of making clothes though, their team realised that these fibres can be moulded into the shape of leg and arm sockets.
What a way of making use of old plastic bottles!
It says making a prosthetic limb usually costs up to £5,000, but by using old bottles it could cost just £10!
Patients are so far saying they are comfortable to wear too.
They say this could help millions of people who can't afford prosthetics - and reduce plastic pollution at the same time.
Seems a rather splendid idea to me, if it really works.
13-10-2019, 06:50 AM
3
Re: Plastic limbs
Originally Posted by Mups
->
Not sure if this should be in Health, or Science?I have read that Engineers at De Montfort Uni in Leicester, have discovered they can grind down plastic bottles into a powder that looks much like sugar. They can then turn this powder into strings of polyester like there is in a lot of our clothing.
Instead of making clothes though, their team realised that these fibres can be moulded into the shape of leg and arm sockets.
What a way of making use of old plastic bottles!
It says making a prosthetic limb usually costs up to £5,000, but by using old bottles it could cost just £10!
Patients are so far saying they are comfortable to wear too.
They say this could help millions of people who can't afford prosthetics - and reduce plastic pollution at the same time.
Seems a rather splendid idea to me, if it really works.
That is brilliant, Mups.
13-10-2019, 08:32 AM
5
Re: Plastic limbs
More info:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...sthetic-limbs/
Artificial limbs have previously been made from bulk plastic - high-density polyethylene - however those were heavy and not durable.
By contrast, the new design spins recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the building blocks of plastic bottles, into yarns 10 times stronger than bulk plastic.
These yarns can be “knitted” into a porous socket which keeps the patient cooler, particularly crucial in the case of diabetic amputees, who often sweat a lot.
This is a feature that neither carbon or glass fibre sockets - currently the best designs available - can boast.
It takes approximately five one-litre Coca-cola bottles to make one prosthetic socket.
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