
A teen who built a prosthetic arm for his dad - raleighm
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180327-the-teen-who-built-a-prosthetic-arm-for-his-dad
======
weinzierl
Reminds me of the story of Daniel Gurdan[1] who lost two fingers as a child
doing chemistry experiments in his parents basement. Being an avid juggler he
made himself a juggling glove with servo driven prosthetic fingers [2] and won
the first price in the German national science competition (Jugend forscht) in
1999 [3].

He won another price in the same competition in another year for building a
UAV which could be flown by moving the hand in a special glove.

He co-founded the UAV company Ascending Technologies [4] which was later
acquired by Intel[5].

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/person/daniel-gurdan#section-
rece...](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/daniel-gurdan#section-recent-news-
and-activity)

[2]
[https://patents.google.com/patent/DE19906294A1/3Den](https://patents.google.com/patent/DE19906294A1/3Den)

[3] [https://www.jugend-
forscht.de/projektdatenbank/jonglierhands...](https://www.jugend-
forscht.de/projektdatenbank/jonglierhandschuh-servotechnische-
fingerprothese.html)

[4] [http://www.asctec.de/en](http://www.asctec.de/en)

[5] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ascending-
technologi...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ascending-technologies)

~~~
f0wl
I took part in the 2017 round of 'Jugend forscht' and actually talked to him
for about 10 minutes. One of the judges already told me about AsTech, but I
didn't know about his first project. Even though he wasn't really familiar
with my topic he immediately recognized a flaw in my work and had a lot of
good ideas on hand. His story is really inspiring.

------
darkerside
This is the best version of our future. Young people realizing that technology
has reached a point where individuals can create new things, not for a
paycheck but because they improve our own and each other's lives. You think
Uber disrupted the taxi industry? One kid just disrupted an entire branch of
biomedical engineering.

Of course, this could easily be followed up by the worst version of our
future, where work like this comes to be expected and demanded of our best and
brightest with no appreciation for their efforts.

Act wisely, humans!

~~~
maxerickson
I really hope the hand is just an impressive high school project and that the
father also has access to a state of the art prosthetic from the VA. He
should.

~~~
sramam
wonder which one the Dad would be prouder to wear?!

~~~
corpMaverick
I know it is a rhetorical question. But there is a practical answer. The
article said that it was designed to play video games. So he would use that
one for that purpose and the other one for general use. The gist is that now
we are able to design affordable things for specific purposes.

~~~
simonh
I agree it sounded that way from the way they edited it, but the video game
controller adapter made the controller usable with one hand. It was a separate
project from the arm, the video shows his father playing a video game with his
left hand, while his right arm is visible with no prosthetic on it.

------
lettergram
I've had the privilege of working alongside some other groups making cheaper,
better prostetics:

[http://www.psyonic.co/technology/](http://www.psyonic.co/technology/)

It's amazing how much there is to improve, and how small adjustments or really
people who care can make a massive difference. It's not supprising at all that
this guy's soon built him a better arm than many of the standard stuff out
there (which is expensive and breaks).

------
tsmarsh
After building my own printer from parts and realizing how hard it is to make
something that can follow gcode accurately, repeatedly and quickly I’m still
left wondering “How good is this hand?”

Most of the stuff I’ve printed or built has ended up being “ok”. A lot of that
is that I’m not a meatspace engineer, or a pixie engineer, I’m a software
engineer. So I’m very much on the learning curve of robotics... but there is a
lot to learn. AvE talks a lot about industrial lego, and its true you can just
bolt and solder stuff together and get a prototype, or a proof of concept, but
getting that to a product is really hard.

So when we say that a kid has built an arm for his Dad, is that a cute story
or a sign that the bar for this kind of technology has dropped to the point
that a high school kid can build a useful product?

I suspect in this instance its a cute story. That or I really need to up my
game.

~~~
nickparker
There's a pretty large community online 3D printing prosthetics, mainly the
loosely affiliated community called enabling the future[0] and a nonprofit
which sprung from them called Limbforge[1].

The printed prostheses are almost all body powered, which means they use some
sort of harness to pull a cable with the closest extant joint on the arm, and
those cables close the grip.

As body powered prostheses go, they're pretty good nowadays. They're still
nowhere near the usefulness of say a BeBionic, but they cost tens of dollars
instead of tens of thousands, so it's a reasonable trade-off.

Kids are the best use case by far though, because they grow out of their hands
every year or two. When you can amortize the cost over years I think the high
end devices are a much better choice, but if someone can't afford them or just
doesn't want a prosthesis that badly the printed options are still a nice
alternative.

[0]: [http://enablingthefuture.org/](http://enablingthefuture.org/) [1]:
[https://www.limbforge.org/](https://www.limbforge.org/)

------
blufox
This may be the original article [http://fox2now.com/2018/02/20/high-school-
student-learns-to-...](http://fox2now.com/2018/02/20/high-school-student-
learns-to-use-3-d-printer-to-make-an-arm-for-his-father/)

------
rocky1138
> “You design one thing and can email it to someone else… and you’re helping
> people all over,” Robbie says. “That’s the power of engineering.”

Damn. I really wish he would have included the ability for those people to
make their own improvements and share them back to make the whole ecosystem
better. That's one of the major tenets of free software licenses and this is a
perfect opportunity to make sure that right gets included in this mindset.

Not to take away from anything else in the piece or his work, but definitely a
missed opportunity.

------
kmfrk
How safe are the materials for 3D printing wrt contact with human skin these
days? I recall earlier versions of resin being a bit dodgy back in the day.

~~~
sannee
The food safety concern about porosity and bacteria growth would probably
apply for stuff like this.

Should be easy to solve by reprinting the prosthesis every few months or
something like that.

~~~
jakeogh
Or design it to be coated with an appropriate epoxy.

------
ryanhuff
Somebody on a 3d printing forum that I belong to has posted pictures of
arm/hand prosthetics that he has printed for kids who didn't have access to
more expensive commercially available prosthetics. Its amazing the impact that
3d printing technology and few dollars in filament can have on a person's
life.

------
macjohnmcc
It is truly amazing what people can do with 3D printers and some ingenuity.
Yesterday I designed and printed a part to fix a broken pepper mill so my only
contribution to society using 3D printing so far is that I didn't toss an
otherwise good item in the trash.

~~~
twothamendment
I've always thought 3D printers were cool, but never found a reason to want
one of my own. You just gave me a reason. A big enough reason? We'll see. I
hate throwing out things that are 99% fine, but have one little, broken part
you know you can't buy anywhere.

~~~
macjohnmcc
So far I fixed that pepper mill. Fixed a broken part of my wife's car that
held the controls for her drivers side seat that probably would have cost as
much as the printer since it is a Mercedes. I printed a small fold-able stand
for my Mac Book Pro that allows me to place a fan behind it and blow air over
and under it to keep it cool while closed. My next project is designing and
printing a new tone armrest for my old Pioneer turntable.

------
agumonkey
I need to do a leg for our neighbor's 3legged cat..

------
jngreenlee
Pretty awesome. Will the medical industry prevent this from getting on US
broadcast TV, as one of the largest sponsors of advertising?

~~~
maxerickson
Note that the video intro is the ABC national evening news:

[http://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-builds-baseball-throwing-
prost...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-builds-baseball-throwing-prosthetic-
arm-father-injured/story?id=53683928)

The BBC probably did the story after seeing it air on US broadcast tv 2 weeks
ago.

