Injured animals get new limbs – from 3D printers
3D printing may still be in its infancy but it’s changed the way we make, conceive and preserve things. Even ancient treasures in the Middle East overrun by ISIS may be recreatedwith 3D printing, say archaeologists, who are planning to flood the region with 3D cameras as a first step of this ambitious effort to save world heritage. 3D printers are being used to build prototypes of cars, to manufacture drugs, and make beautiful patterns in glass.
Still, one of the best things that seem to have evolved out of the innovation is restoring limb and life to animals. 3D printing is now being used in many corners of the world to build prosthetics for injured animals. Take Tieta the Toucan in Rio de Janerio, for example. Tieta was injured and rescued from an animal fair and found with half of her upper beak missing. This severely hampered her feeding, forcing her to eat by tossing food in the air with her lower beak and trying to catch it – a method that was successful only one out of three times.
A collaboration between a wildlife management group and three universities in Brazil conceived and build a prosthetic beak for Tieta that is made of plastic, covered with nail polish and sealed with a castor oil polymer. It took the bird three days to realize she had regained a beak but soon enough, she was munching comfortably on her favourite maggots.
Beauty, a bald eagle in Idaho, also lost her beak when she was shot in the face. She got lucky when a mechanical engineer created a printed a bionic beak and fitted it on her with the help of an animal medic and his own dentist.
Derby the dog was born with deformed front legs and had been dragging himself around on his hind legs for years till Tara Anderson, who worked at 3D Systems, adopted him. Anderson roped her team into building prosthetic legs to help derby run again.
The advantage of 3D printing is that it allows making and testing prototypes many times over without the time and effort of building them by hand. Almost any shape can be printed in almost any material. In the manufacturing business, this can potentially cut costs down dramatically by eliminating the requirement of moulds. It also speeds up the creation of new iterations of a product just by tweaking the design on a computer.
