Hi Thanks for coming to my site.
I would like to share some of my ideas that brought me to build the Limbar™ .
First after many years of pain and suffering, an amputee since 1985 I had always had problems with a very sensitive stump.
I spent a significant time on crutches, causing my residual limb to shrink.
Realising I was having a problem, I looked for assistance.
I was unable to find any equipment suitable for me to strengthen my leg.
It led me to develop the Hydraujoint as seen in this picture.
This was the first Hydraujoint Prototype, Drawn By D.Kemp
The Hydraujoint was designed utilising a hydraulic ram for resistance, hence the name “Hydrau” The “Joint” part of the name obviously came from the fact this was to strengthen the Knee joint.
I tried to present this idea to several people in the field of orthopedics and limb building.
I was at first told there was no research to show that there was even a need to strengthen an amputees leg anymore than what wearing a well fitting prosthetic would do.
I was convinced I would not have been walking again if I had not undergone a physical strength building course using a resistance device.
So I employed the help of people way smarter than myself to assist me to prove that there in fact was a need.
I met with people from Vision Manawatu and Massey University, and we came up with a plan.
Prof Alan Warmsley worked on a literature review, while Mark Dudding a fourth year design Graduate worked on other research out lined in my other blogs.
We came across a patent for a product that looked very similar to the one I had earlier developed.
It looked like this.
Patent discovery
Through the discovery of this patent we were able to uncover some of the flaws of the design.
Even though it had helped me, we found that it could have been better.
There was also a chance of muscle injury with the resistance supplied by the hydraulic ram. It was unforgiving steady resistance.
What we needed was something that had variable resistance.
Professor Alan Warmsley had come up with a design brief, I will share it with you soon
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Hydraujoint's Blog 