Customised gloves for people with hand deformities

The hands are a human being’s most important tool, which is why the wearing of safety gloves plays a major role in occupational safety. Hand injuries are one of the most common consequences of accidents at work – and why you should minimise the risk of skin and hand injuries by using suitable safety gloves.

Do you have a congenital hand deformity or deformities caused by an accident? If you do, it’s usually impossible to find a suitable safety glove. No two hands are alike and often the range of available glove sizes is not sufficient to find a suitable one. However, perfect fit plays an important role in safety: if the gloves are too small, the mobility of the fingers will be hugely restricted, and if the gloves are too large, sensitivity is considerably reduced. It’s particularly difficult to find the right safety gloves if you have malpositions, shortening or other defects of the hand. It’s for users like these, who cannot wear conventional five-finger work gloves, that we want to guarantee the best possible wearer comfort and maximum protection. That’s why uvex offers the option of manufacturing customised gloves for people with hand deformities. Advanced manufacturing expertise and fully integrated development processes across all stages of the process enables us to produce fully customised gloves.

We produce many different types of gloves – depending on the manufacturing process there are different customisation options. There are two basic models:

• Seam-free gloves
• Cotton gloves

Seam-free gloves

The textile linings used to make seam-free gloves – known as seamless liners – are manufactured fully automatically on knitting machines. The basic parameters such as the number or width of the fingers are hard-coded into this procedure and therefore cannot be changed with regard to size. That’s why uvex can only customise seamless gloves by altering them. Using the alterations process, uvex can adapt any product, including mechanical safety gloves with and without cut protection, welding gloves, as well as leather gloves from the uvex Top Grade series to the specific needs of the customer.

Cotton gloves

For gloves based on a cotton lining, there are almost no restrictions with regard to hand parameters. Accordingly, the possibilities for adaptation are considerably more varied. In this case, safety gloves can also be made for users with syndactyly – a condition in which two or more fingers are fused together. Because in this production process the textile is customised before the coating is applied, chemical protection gloves from the uvex rubiflex S series can be produced in addition to mechanical safety gloves. The gloves’ barrier function and their resistance to chemicals is fully retained in this manufacturing process.

The following information is required to produce a customised glove:

• Specification of the desired glove model
• Specification of the glove size
• Scan of the hand from both sides
• Outline drawing of the hand
• The parameters of the deformity: length, width, possibly height

The glove for people with hand deformities is manufactured in three steps:

Do you have hand deformities and need a safety glove? We can give you detailed advice and help you find a suitable safety glove – get in touch!

Please note that the availability of this service is not global and therefore, you should contact your local uvex subsidiary to ascertain whether the country in which you reside offers the customised glove service.