Case Study: Central Virginia VA Health Care System achieves rapid, reliable production of customized TPU stylus holders for veterans with Markforged

The Central Virginia VA Health Care System seeks to improve the lives of military heroes through innovation

The Central Virginia VA Health Care System’s Assistive Technology team supports veterans and service members with disabilities by designing adaptive devices, and faced a clinical challenge: patients with limited grip strength and dexterity needed custom stylus holders (wrist straps) to hold pens and styluses. Because TPU is the most appropriate flexible material but notoriously hard to print reliably, the team needed a fast, repeatable way to produce individualized splints in a clinical, time‑sensitive environment; they had prior experience using Markforged printers for rigid Onyx parts.

To solve this, the team introduced Markforged’s Smooth TPU 95A and purchased an Onyx Pro 3D printer, enabling reliable, high‑quality TPU prints and rapid iteration from validation to custom production. Markforged’s workflow let clinicians and engineers quickly tailor wrist‑strap stylus holders for individual patients, scale successful designs to others, and deliver functional outcomes that restore the ability to grip writing implements—shortening design cycles and producing consistently usable parts that the VA plans to share publicly via the NIH 3D Print Exchange.

Central Virginia VA Health Care System

Brian Burkhardt

Clinical Rehabilitation Engineer