Seven-year-old baseball fan, Hailey Dawson, will pitch the ball with a 3D printed prosthetic hand at Game 4 of the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series this weekend when the LA Dodgers face the Houston Astros in Houston.
With invitations from all 30 of MLB teams, this will be Hailey’s third time throwing out the opening ball with her custom prosthetic built by a team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), using Stratasys 3D printing.
Hailey was born with Poland syndrome, a rare birth defect, which resulted in her being born without her three middle fingers. With traditional prosthetics typically costing upwards of $25,000, in 2014, Hailey’s mother, Yong Dawson set about finding an alternative which led her to Robohand, the South Africa-based open-source initiative for 3D printed prosthetics.
In search of someone to help print a hand for Hailey, Engineers at UNLV’s Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering took on the project using Stratasys Fortus 250mc 3D printer. By 2015, Hailey was throwing her first opening pitch at a UNLV Rebels baseball game, which quickly led to an MLB game.
Yong commented: “I want to bring awareness to this solution and help other children like Hailey, who have Poland syndrome. I want people to know they can get help from someone who understands 3D printing. A hand can be built for under $2,000, and maybe as cheaply as $200. It’s the perfect solution for children, who could out-grow several prosthetic hands before they stop growing. There are 3D printing companies out there who can build a hand for you, or a local school’s engineering program may be willing to help.”
As Hailey grows, her prosthetic hand design, which began as the “Robohand” and evolved to the “Flexy-Hand 2”, can easily be scaled up and 3D printed to fit her. These designs are free to the public, so anyone can download and print for free.
“The current hand design is good, but we’re looking at ways to improve it,” says UNLV’s Mechanical Engineering Department Chair, Dr. Brendan O’Toole. “One student is designing a more optimal, more functional thumb with improved dexterity and gripping power. Another student is working on a way to make the individual fingers flex more independently. And a third student is researching ways the device could be motorised.
“Working on Hailey’s 3D printed hand has been a great learning experience for our students. And our Stratasys 3D Printer is a critical tool to print these prosthetics. All of the various hand parts that we make have small internal channels. We run small diameter cables or ‘tendons’ through the channels to actuate the finger gripping action. The Stratasys 3D Printer is able to reliably print small intricate internal channels that allow us to assemble the hand quickly after printing.”
