I dropped a chunk of concrete on my finger a while ago, which crushed it in a spectacularly painful way. I didn't want to go to a clinic just to be told to support it and avoid using the finger until it healed (there's not much you can do for a fingertip, even if it's broken). I had other splints on hand, but they all had a fatal flaw - you can't type with them due to their bulk. Clearly I needed a better solution.

Putting pressure on the tip of my finger caused the most pain, and I was massively behind on my paperwork. I needed to be able to type! So I designed this splint to move the pressure of typing to the next joint down, keeping pressure off the fingertip while also immobilizing it. Creating the first revision was painful, but once I had a rudimentary support the following iterations were much easier.

It's constructed with hulled circles and spheres, offset by a few millimeters to account for the ovoid shape of a finger. The angle between the first and second joint is customizable, as are the lengths and widths of each section. I found that the angle was extremely important, picking an angle that's as close as possible to your resting hand position makes adjusting to typing with it very quick. I've included the .STL for the one I used on my finger, but you'll likely need to tailor one to fit.

My original design was solid, but I realized after a few minutes that the lack of airflow made my finger get sweaty, uncomfortable, and caused the splint to slip off. So I added cutouts to keep the splint in place while still allowing the skin to breathe. Due to the orientation of the part when it's printed, the support beams are the weak point of the design. They have a nasty tendency to snap off when removing the part from the print bed, or when removing support material. I had good results without supports, and recommend trying that first.

I'm hoping not to need this design again, but if I were to revisit it I'd attempt to use a silicone layer or flexible filament in part of the tip. My main complaint was that the plastic on plastic contact had very little friction, causing my finger to slip off the keys a few times. This would be worse with a flat key profile such as on most laptops.

Disclaimer: This is not a medical device, I am not a doctor, and I am not advocating that you treat yourself or anyone else with this design. It worked very well for me, though. I got my paperwork done, and the finger healed up nicely after a few weeks.

Wanhao

Wanhao Duplicator i3 V2

No

0.1mm