A team of six Cleveland Metropolitan School District high school students has returned from a trip to Ecuador to deliver 3D-printed prosthetic limbs to 20 children.
Using 3D printers keeps costs low — a key barrier in providing the devices to children in lower income countries, said JonDarr V.T. Bradshaw, robotics team leader for the Great Lakes Science Center, which collaborates with a nonprofit medical organization, Med Access International, on the project.
"Most doctors won't prescribe prosthetic devices, at least in developing nations, for children because the cost is so high and children will grow," he said. "But for this cost, for $55 to $60, when a child outgrows this, we can make them a new one."
Prosthetic hands and arms for children typically cost between $5,000 and $10,000, he said.
The project began in 2022 when two students, Yariselle Andujar and Daniela Valentina Moreno Machuca, took what they were learning about robots and applied it to an altruistic goal, Bradshaw said.
The two students had realized they could print 3D parts for their competition robots cheaper than building them with other materials — and had the idea of using the same technology for artificial limbs, he said.
The project has so far provided prosthetics to more than 50 children, Andujar said.
"Seeing the small things that they ask for like requests of eating or being able to wipe themselves after using their restroom, we don't understand how important that is for someone else that's missing that in their life," she said.
Project members also served as translators for a US-based international medical mission to Ecuador that provided care to more than 800 patients.
They also provided training on 3D printing to students and teachers at a local technical college in Ecuador. They met with the Ministry of Health for the Republic of Ecuador to discuss their work and the value of STEM or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.
Project members are now training students in other cities and abroad to use 3D printers to manufacture prosthetic limbs.
