The MU 3D Printing Club has worked for the past year to help a local dog named Tucker get a prosthetic leg.
Tucker, a 5-year-old Australian shepherd, was born without his right hind foot. Though he is perfectly mobile now, the pressure of walking on three legs could lead to hip dysplasia, among other health problems, later in life.
Samuel Donovan, president of the MU 3D Printing Club, said the project started when Tucker’s owner, Kendra Earl Warlow, stumbled upon the previous club president, Nick Bira, working at a separate 3D printing service in Ellis Library called Print Anything. She asked Bira about the possibility of printing a prosthetic for Tucker using the 3D printers, and he redirected her toward the 3D Printing Club.
Since April of last year, club members have worked to design and print multiple foot prototypes for Tucker. They started with a plaster cast of Tucker’s leg, which they then scanned into a computer for a digital model, Donovan said. Using those measurements, they designed various shapes for the foot using a program called Meshmixer.
Printed prototypes have ranged from looking like a peg leg to having a tennis ball at the end. The most recent prototype looked similar to a real dog leg, rather than being mechanical.
Tucker is predicted to have his final prosthetic by the end of the semester.
“[If] we weren’t all taking classes and different stuff, we would have completed this much quicker,” Donovan said. “For the most part, it’s been a constant process where we started with conceptual sketches, moving on to designs, moving on to prototyping, more prototyping and more prototyping.”
Along with the leg itself, club members have experimented with ways to make Tucker comfortable with his prosthetic. This includes designing a sock for him to wear and exploring the prospect of using a harness to secure the leg.
“That’s definitely difficult: designing it so he’s comfortable so he wants to use it,” Donovan said. “We have to convince him that he wants to wear it all the time, that it’s good for him to wear it.”
The benefits of the leg go beyond Tucker and toward the future of club members who often work on these kinds of projects.
“There’s a lot of club members that are interested in prosthetics,” Donovan said. “There’s mechanical engineers and biological engineers with the project, [and] also non-engineers as well who are just interested in prosthetics or 3D printing. We’re hoping this exposure to prosthetics will give everybody a lot of great experience that they can apply to the workforce or possibly it will open their eyes to possible career opportunities they may not have thought of previous to this.”
Tucker’s owner will receive the finished product for free, as the project is entirely funded by the 3D Printing Club.
“I am so thankful to have folks as excited about helping my sweet pup as I am,” Warlow said.
_Edited by Stephi Smith | ssmith@themaneater.com_