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Katelyn Vincik's parents said their daughter was born with a left hand that was not fully formed. While Katelyn has always known her left hand was a little different than her right, it has not slowed her down.
"She's very determined, she does everything," said Kimberly Vincik. "It's never held her back."
[...] Katelyn has been on a waiting list for more than a year for a functional prosthetic. "It has not been FDA-approved. It's basically tied up in approval and legal," said Katelyn's father, Casey.
Her parents said Katelyn was offered a cosmetic prosthetic hand, but the little girl found it too heavy and generally disliked the way it looked.
[...] Determined to find a hand for Katelyn, the family drove from Victoria to Clear Lake and met with Branch Librarian Jim Johnson and Innovation Lab trainer Patrick Ferrell.
"We let them know we don't know anything about prosthetics. We've never done this before. We just know how to run a 3-D printer," said Ferrell. The fact the lab never printed a hand didn't stop Ferrell and a team of volunteers from diving into the project.
[...] The Vinciks said Katelyn took to her new hand like she'd had it all her life. Kimberly Vincik said some of Katelyn's first words after receiving the hand were directed to her younger sister, Lacey.
"(She said) 'Lacey, we can hold hands now,'" Vincik said.
The polylactic acid material used to make Katelyn's hand was even dyed in Katelyn's favorite colors: pink and purple. The prosthetic attaches to Katelyn's arm and a pulley system opens and closes the hand when Katelyn bends her arm.
Pretty amazing stuff these days eh?
Here's a link to the library: http://www.hcpl.net/content/jocelyn-h-lee-innovation-lab-0
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:13AM
So this is an uplifting story, but also a tale of how the future will be ruled by bureaucracy and big biz.
I did my first 3D printing this month, and I have to say for all the shortcomings, it is pretty amazing.
So now we are all just waiting for the 100 year copyright/patent train to make it impossible to 3D print something useful.
In medical applications, imagine the huge amount of benefit to having bespoke designs for everyone?
I'm trying to personalise medicines, so about time we made other things personal!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:33AM
I highly doubt 3D printer DRM will go anywhere past the joke stage.
If your "stolen" design or gun parts get censored off of Thingiverse, it will just be put on The Pirate Bay or Freenet or whatever.
A bigger issue will be the labor and surgical costs associated with parts more complicated than a hand. Like a trachea. Lots of people could have printed this hand.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @01:15AM
bespoke designs for everyone?
Bespoke Fucks - Hire a fucksmith, sir? [oglaf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @11:43PM
> So this is an uplifting story, but also a tale of how the future will be ruled by bureaucracy and big biz.
My panasonic microwave has a design defect. One of the latches is mounted on a flimsy piece of sheet metal that eventually bends too far out for the latch to close completely. Since the latch is part of the fail-safe to operate the microwave, that is a pretty big problem. It is a well known problem affecting lots of panasonic models, there are lots of threads about it around the net. There is also a bracket on thingiverse that you can print out for about 10 cents and super-glue in place to hold the sheet metal steady.
I printed it out and it worked great. But that thingiverse page is not high in the google hits for any mention of the latch problem, it took me months of occasional searches before I discovered it.
So I tried to post messages about it on the discussion forums that are the top hits for the latch problem. All of them censored my posts and deleted the URL. I was not selling anything or promoting anything, just telling my story and providing a link to the free thingiverse page with the 3d model that can be freely printed on basically any 3d printer. You don't even need to create an account on thingiverse in order to download it. I even got into a debate with the mods on the biggest site and they told me tough shit and that if I wanted to tell anyone where to find the printable model, I could do it through a private message. When I mentioned that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow I would be unable to respond to PM's, they deleted that message.