NEW YORK: A disabled dog in the US has been successfully fitted with 3D printed prosthetics, allowing him to run down the street for the first time ever.
Derby was born with a congenital deformity characterized by small forearms and no front paws.
Derby was, until now, only able to get around on soft surfaces. Hard surfaces, like sidewalks, caused severe abrasions on his front extremities.
Derby is now able to run alongside, and sometimes past, his newly adoptive owners.
Having fostered Derby through the dog rescue group Peace and Paws in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Tara Anderson, an employee at South Carolina-based 3D Systems, decided to help.
Using 3D technology, she knew it would be possible to rapidly design and manufacture prosthetics customized to Derby’s morphology.
Derrick Campana, a certified Orthotist at Animal Ortho Care in Chantilly, Virginia, and 3DS designers, Kevin Atkins and Dave DiPinto, used data of Derby’s forearms to create the 3D design.
The team utilized Geomagic Freeform, a digital sculpting platform, which allowed them to create perfect organic shapes and smooth curves for Derby’s shape.
Anderson and the designers built complete prosthetics with comfortable cups in rubber and rigid spokes and base.
Ready in a few hours, the prosthetics were shipped to Derby for testing.
“The dovetailing of 3D scanning and design with the ProJet 5500X multi-material 3D printing allowed for the creation of complete prosthetics printed in a single build, custom-fit to Derby,” Buddy Byrum, Vice President of Product and Channel Management, 3DS said in a statement. -PTI
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