Finger Spoon

Oliwier is a joyful, vivacious and inquisitive boy. Unfortunately, he is also seriously ill – he was born without legs and with only one hand and a little finger. Recently we have had a chance to give him a little bit of joy by making custom designed spoons and crayons for him. The first step was to meet Oliwier and collect all important information connected with designing the spoon. After establishing a finger diameter and a grip type we were ready to go. We decided to use 3D printing to create the handles.

We designed and printed four prototypes of the spoons and we sent them to Oliwier to try them on. The finger holes turned out to be too small, which caused fitting a little bit difficult, but finally we managed to choose the best shape of the handle.

The next step was to design all needed elements in CAD software. The handles should have exact holes for spoons, crayons and the finger. The part designed to fit the spoon was bent at an angle of 45 degrees to make maneuvering a little bit easier.

We decided to use previously bought children spoons made of plastic for this project. Even though PLA is thought to be food-safe we were worried that during the printing process it could change its properties. We did not want to take the risk so we used tried and tested products.

The Handles were printed using 0,4 mm nozzle and green ABS. After the process had been finished we had to heat the printed parts to get rid of local cracks. We adjusted the spoons and crayons to the printed parts using Dremel 3000.

All parts were glued together with cyanoacrylate glue and left to dry. After a little bit of cleaning the completed spoons and crayons were sent to Oliwier to further testing :)