This quarter has such a great learning experience for me. Finally, I feel that my project is starting to come together and I feel like a real, productive mentorship student. At my mentorship, Dankmeyer Inc, I get to be emersed in the world of prosthetics, with involvement and guidance from both practioners and technicians. That is probably the most valuable aspect of my mentorship, in one day I can go from observing a patient being casted for a socket and then go to the back shop and see how those measurements and plaster molds turn into working prosthetic limbs. After a few weeks of observing all of these processes and interviewing various employees, I got to construct a below-knee socket mostly by myself. My mentor found an older above-knee prosthetic which we turned into a below-knee amputee. I got to plaster the limb, fill the mold, and go through the long process of molding and shaving down the plaster to get the desired shape. Another employee there, Joe, was a great help, checking my work and teaching me as I worked. The next step was to make the plaster mold into a duraplex socket by heating the duraplex and draping it seamlessly over the mold. With each step in the process of making the socket, I saw the connections between the technical aspects of its construction and how it could affect the final product. For example, the next step was to sand down the edges of the socket into smooth trim lines. These smooth, buffed trim lines are extremely critical in preventing pin holes in the sleeves and therefore the loss of suction. Now that I have my testing apparatus almost complete, my mentor and I just need to narrow down our options of what factors we want to experiment. I’m so eager to continue working on this project.