Now, 3D printed prosthetics are making a splash in the NDSU Innovation Challenge, an annual competition put on by the North Dakota State University Research and Technology Park in partnership with the NDSU Office of the Provost. This is their seventh year offering the challenge, with the purpose to see students opening their minds and innovating, while exploring and pursuing their entrepreneurial sides. Oh, and wait–prizes are involved too. Always a motivating force, those entering can look forward to winning $27,000 in cash prizes with $5K going to first place innovations, $1K to second, and $500 for third place winners.
Traveling to Joseph’s country with the Fargo Moorhead Haiti Medical Mission, Cooper was well prepared for the trip as he’d already been able to make the prosthetic ahead of time.
“We were able to get prelim measurements over Facebook,” said Cooper. “He sent pictures of himself next to a tape measure. Once we got down there, [we] put it in hot water and molded it to the limb.”
His goal with the project overall is indeed to see prices for prosthetics lowered all around. While many specialists have a hard time making such enormous changes and departing from the traditional, the disparity in costs is just too much to ignore–with their new 3D printed products costing around $10,000 as opposed to devices that can be as much as a staggering $100,000.
“70% of the market is in third world countries, and most of them have no access or cannot afford prosthetics. So if we can provide limbs to people it will change their lives and may be able to do more than they can do now,” said Bierscheid.
“3D printing is fun and cool, but that is not why I am doing this, I want to help people,” he said.
Cooper and his team have also developed another arm previously, the Printed Artificial Limb (PAL), which has been given to a three-year-old boy. That device is somewhat more complex though in that it involves bioelectronics, requiring charging–which could be a questionable process in a third-world country. The latest prosthetic was one that Cooper came up with during an exhausting finals week at school. He mastered the design taking breaks from studying, and constructing it out of 3D printed parts, as well as a PVC pipe.
“I can’t believe I came up with it,” Cooper says.
His team, along with a long list of others in multiple categories (agriculture, products, services, social impact) has made it to the semi-finals of the contest, which ends on February 25th with final presentations. This challenge is open to all NDSU undergraduate and graduate students. Discuss this latest challenge in the 3D Printed Prosthetics Highlighted in NDSU Contest forum over at 3DPB.com.
[Sources: Emerging Prairie; WDAY]