3D printed prosthetics revolution:
EPU 46 Carbon Seals for Adam's Hands |
BionIT Labs & Prototek
In the rapidly evolving world of 3D printed prosthetics, every component, no matter how small, plays a vital role. BionIT Labs has taken a bold step by adopting EPU 46 Carbon for its sealing elements in the Adam’s Hand system.
These aren’t just ordinary gaskets: they represent the frontier of combining additive manufacturing, biocompatible elastomers, and precision engineering.
3D printed prosthetics: Why seals matter in a bionic hand
Seals might seem like minor components, but in prosthetic devices they are mission-critical.
They ensure airtight and dustproof interfaces, protect internal mechanisms from contaminants, preserve the integrity of actuators, and deliver a comfortable tactile experience. Especially in medical devices, seals must endure cyclic mechanical stress, chemical exposure, and maintain dimensional stability over time. A failing seal can compromise the performance or safety of the entire prosthetic system.
In essence, seals in a bionic hand are exposed to the same demands faced by industrial, automotive, or high-precision electronic systems—but within far stricter space, biocompatibility, and reliability constraints.
Digital Light Synthesis™ and the path to high-performance seals
To meet these demands, BionIT Labs partnered with Prototek and leveraged Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS) platform. This advanced additive manufacturing method allows creating seals with finely tuned geometries, lattice infills, and variable material stiffness—capabilities that traditional molding cannot match.
Thanks to DLS, designers can customize stiffness profiles, embed soft/hard transitions, and optimize seal geometry in ways that maximize performance, durability, and compactness. The additive route also enables rapid iteration and prototyping, accelerating the qualification cycle for new seal designs.
Why EPU 46 Carbon?
EPU 46 is a high-performance polyurethane elastomer developed by Carbon for demanding applications. Let’s unpack its key advantages in the context of prosthetic seals:
Tunable stiffness — by adjusting the A:B ratios and lattice parameters, EPU 46 parts can range from Shore ~78A to ~56A. This adaptability enables designers to balance softness (for sealing) and rigidity (for structural support).
High energy return and elasticity — EPU 46 exhibits strong resilience, enabling repeated deformation without fatigue. It can stretch ~300% before breaking.
Abrasion & chemical resistance — as a durable elastomer, it withstands wear, solvents, and exposure to bodily fluids better than many alternatives.
Biocompatibility — EPU 46 meets ISO 10993-5, 10993-10, 10993-23 standards, making it suitable for medical contact applications.
Color and aesthetic flexibility — available both in black and “color base,” which allows custom pigmenting without sacrificing mechanical performance.
Sustainability — EPU 46 contains ~40% bio-based content, aligning with eco-design principles.
These features make EPU 46 exceptionally suited for 3D printed seals in prosthetics, combining mechanical robustness, longevity, and medical compliance in one material.
Case Study: Seals for Adam’s Hand
For BionIT Labs’ Adam’s Hand, the seal design is integrated with other protective layers, most notably the Adam’s Skin glove and o-rings, resulting in IP67-level protection from water and dust. The multi-tier sealing architecture ensures the internal electronics and moving parts remain safe even in harsh environments.
Prototek’s execution of the seal production using EPU 46 Carbon ensures consistent dimensional accuracy, tight tolerances, and finish quality that meets the high standards of prosthetic applications. Their additive manufacturing service offers lead times of few days.
Because these seals are additive manufactured, BionIT Labs can iterate rapidly, testing different lattice structures, wall thicknesses, or hardness transitions, without needing to retool molds or suffer long downtime.
Design, testing, and optimization in 3D printed prosthetics
The real advantage lies in the integration of parametric design, simulation, and additive production:
Designers can run FEA simulations to predict deformation, stress distribution, or sealing pressure, and feed those insights into iterative geometry tweaks.
With additive, they can build gradients in stiffness or embed flexible segments seamlessly in one piece (something impossible with traditional molding).
Prototype → test → refine cycles shrink from months to weeks or days.
This design freedom drives functional optimization: minimal material use, weight reduction, enhanced sealing, and local stress relief, all tailored to the ergonomics and mechanics of a prosthetic hand.
Broader context: 3D printed 3D printed prosthetics with elastomers in medical devices
Printing polyurethane elastomers for medical use is challenging: maintaining isotropic mechanical properties, controlling curing, avoiding defects (voids, delamination), and ensuring post-processing compatibility (cleaning, sterilization) are nontrivial issues.
Yet progress is underway. Recent reviews highlight advances in material formulations, jetting and photopolymerization methods, and post-cure protocols that expand the practicality of elastomeric additive manufacturing for medical devices.
In the prosthetics domain, 3D printing has already transformed limb fabrication by reducing cost, enabling customization, and accelerating delivery.
But sealing and elastomeric components have lagged, making this BionIT/Prototek/EPU46 Carbon case particularly forward-looking.
The collaboration between BionIT Labs and Prototek demonstrates how the fusion of innovation in the prosthetic field and advanced 3D printing can lead to revolutionary solutions.
Thanks to Carbon’s technology and BionIT Labs’ pioneering vision, Adam’s Hand is enhanced with components designed to last over time while delivering outstanding performance and user experience.
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