Fegely Middle School students are lending a literal hand to another student.
Recently, a science project was started by Fegely Middle School students in the Portage Township Schools pre-engineering program called the “Project Lead The Way Program”.
The kids are building a prosthetic hand, using a 3D printer, for a fellow student who is missing all of the digits on one of his hands. Overseeing the students’ progress is Michael DePasquale, Director or Technology at Portage Township Schools, and Troy Pawlak, the “Project Lead the Way Program” teacher.
DePasquale and his family have been using 3D printing technology at their home and he thought that using that resource in the school was a good idea, too. His son, who attends Liberty Elementary School in Chesterton, was asked to make a prosthetic arm using household objects. DePasquale asked if using a 3D printer was okay, and after getting the go-ahead he and his son found a design on http://enablingthefuture.org/ and made the prosthetic hand. So the seed had been planted.
The idea to help the 7th grade student came to DePasquale from a common gesture – a high-five.
“I love the kids at our schools so whenever I go see them I’m always giving high-fives,” DePasquale said. “One day at Fegely I was walking down the hall and saw one child with no fingers on one hand. I went to Troy to see if making a prosthetic hand for him was something that they would be able to do and something that they would be interested in.”
Pawlak loved the idea, and things were set in motion. The project took about a month to complete. Portage High School lent their 3D printer to the Fegely and measurements were taken of the student’s hand.
“We gave the kids math problems to figure out so that they could get the correct measurements and create the hand to the proper scale,” DePasquale said. “It took about 17 hours to print all 30 parts. Each part is highly detailed.”
Pawlak’s third quarter class designed and printed the parts for the prosthetic hand, and when spring break is over the fourth quarter class will assemble it, doing what is called the “tendon and muscle side”. Once assembled, another week for final adjustments will be needed. The student’s mother and occupational therapist gave input for the prosthetic hand as well to make sure that all of the necessary details were present and available to the students.
“We wanted to make sure that everyone was able to get as much hands on experience as possible so we split things up to make smaller groups,” DePasquale said. “The kids are really excited. They loved doing this project and as asking what else they can do next.”
Photo and video provided by Michael DePasquale