En weer een kind blij gemaakt met een 3D geprinte hand. Dit maal de 8-jarige Steele Songle. Gemaakt door een aantal 17-jarige studenten.
Onder de afbeelding het (engelstalige) verhaal.
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| Eight-year-old Steele Songle, who was born without a left hand, smiles at his mother, Ellen, after trying on an artificial one. |
Steele Songle was born without a left hand, but has never let that hold him back from the thing he loves most – playing sports.
And
now, the 8-year-old from Wilmington, Del., who plays lacrosse and golf,
swims, skis and bounces on his friend’s trampoline, is getting a bit of
bionic help from engineering students at the Westtown School in Chester
County, Pa.
As part of their design and engineering class, using a
3-D device, the students are making a robotic hand with fingers that
can open and close around a lacrosse stick or ski pole.
Among other things, Steele says he is confident the hand will improve his trampoline-basketball game.
“I
can grip better on the trampoline and slam-dunk better,” said Steele,
who maneuvered and played with the device as if it were the coolest toy
on the planet.
“That would be fabulous,” said his mother, Ellen,
associate director of parent and alumni engagement at the Quaker
boarding school, although she also hopes the hand will help Steele with
more mundane activities, such as buttoning his shirt and tying his
shoes.
The two, along with Steele’s father, David, saw the plastic
hand-in-progress on April 18 in the school’s Science Center. The six
engineering students were eager to show Steele what they had so far.
The
idea for a simple robotic hand was created, like many good inventions,
out of need and ingenuity. Richard van As, a carpenter from South Africa
who lost four fingers while sawing wood, teamed with Ivan Owen, a
mechanical special-effects artist from Washington, to develop a
mechanical finger in 2011. Soon they had developed the Robohand and put
the design online so anyone with access to a 3-D printer could make
fingers, hands or arms.
While 3-D printing lets students explore
ideas and solve problems as never before, said teacher Steve Compton,
making a hand is a real challenge. Many parts must interact smoothly and
reliably, and the design has to be form-fitted to the individual.
“This
is a real and transformative thing for a real kid, so doing it right –
no matter how many prototypes it takes to get to finished product – it’s
got to be focused and tailored and great,” Compton said. His other
students are making a submarine to test water quality in the school’s
lake, an improved geriatric walker and an emergency stove that creates
electricity for use in disasters.
Layer by layer, 3-D printers
build objects out of strands of filament that are heated and become
gooey plastic. For the Robohand, fishing line and pins are inserted into
internal holes in the fingers to make them move.
During Steele’s
visit, the students were printing another set of fingers. With a picture
on a computer, the printer moved back and forth, building layer upon
layer of filament into the shape of fingers.
The device is
strapped on with Velcro and driven by the motion of the wrist. Move the
wrist up, and the hand opens; down, and the fingers close. Clay McKee,
18, a senior, said Steele ultimately will be able to adjust the tension
of the fingers for different activities.
Total cost – $3 and some screws. A commercially made hand can cost $10,000 or more.
“We’re thinking of making one specially for swimming,” McKee said.
Although
the prototype was white, the hand can be made in any color. Steele,
“the Man of Steel” to his parents, asked for Superman’s colors.
“We’re going to put the Superman logo on top,” said Alex Nunes, 17, a junior.
Bron: Buffalo News
