Amputee's Support Group Meeting

Jay and Peggy invited us to attend one of their Amputee's Support Group meetings.  They thought we might be interested because at this particular meeting we were going to see how prosthetics and orthodics are made. 

The meeting was held at the facilities of BOAS, a custom prosthetics and orthodics manufacturer.   The guy in green demonstrated putting plaster material on a prosthetic leg in process.  The plaster is used to build the core to the size of the patient's leg. He asked for a volunteer to try it and so one of the members of the group got up and added some plaster to the leg.  She wasn't too happy when she finished and he took it all off so he could start over!!

Here we are still watching the application of plaster to a leg.  The lady doing it was a real card!

We got to see several different types of 

products while we were there

Here this gentleman is showing us how they put the final coating on some of their designer prosthetics.  It was pretty interesting.  

Here he is mixing the hardener into the resin for the final coating on the prosthetic

The prosthetic is in a bag and he just pours the 

epoxy into the bag to cover the prosthetic

Then he smoothes it out to get all the bubbles out of it

This guy is showing us a boot device

Now they are covering the boot with a heated 

acrylic on the boot to make it look like skin

Then it sits and cures overnight

There were all kinds of interesting tools that they used and this young man is demonstrating how he shaping a fitting for a brace.

The external leg brace can be attached to any kind of shoe. This one's attached to an athletic shoe.

Here they demonstrate how a leg is attached and how well the material they use creates a suction to hold the prosthetic firmly in place.  

They have a lot of interesting designs for their sockets too.

They put designs on their boots too!