For designing and fabricating personalized, cost-effective and biodegradable orthoses, a finger orthosis was chosen as an example to explore a suitable material, personalized design method, and fabrication with a fuse-deposition-modeling (FDM) open-source 3D printer. Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/polylactic acid (PLA) composite filaments were explored for 3D printing. The polymer composite compositions were TPU/PLA: 0 %/100 % (TP0), 25 %/75 % (TP25), and 50 %/50 % (TP50) by weight, respectively. The mechanical performance, thermal properties, and structure of the TPU/PLA composite filaments were assessed by tensile tests, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. Compared to the neat PLA, the TP25 specimens exhibited almost the same tensile strength, but its higher elongation at the break indicates that TP25 is more suitable for the material of orthoses. However, a further increase of the TPU ratio to 50 % resulted in a sharp decrease of the tensile strength. The addition of TPU had little effect on the starting thermal decomposition temperature, glass-transition temperature, and melting temperature of the composites. The composite filaments can be printed through the normal 3D printing procedure. 3D scanning and open-source 3D printers can be used to complete the design and fabrication of personalized orthoses.

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