This is just the beginning of the era of 3D technology.
Scott Pelley, Presenter, CBS: Walt Disney once said that animation can explain whatever the mind of men can conceive. He was talking about cartoons, but advances in technology have taken that basic concept to a whole new dimension. Michelle Miller shows us how the idea of a modern day inventor became a 3D reality.
Michelle Miller, Reporter, CBS: Grabbing a backpack is hardly the fit of a superhero unless you’re 12 year old Leon McCarthy and your hand looks like it’s straight out of a science-fiction movie. You’ve actually become a …
Leon McCarthy, Son: Cyborg.
Michelle: There’s a cool factor.
Leon: Yeah, it’s special instead of different.
Michelle: Leon has been special since birth. While he was still in the womb restricted blood flow prevented his hand from developing.
Paul McCarthy, Dad: I saw his hand sticking up and there were no fingers on it and it was hard for my wife, it was hard for me.
Michelle: Two years ago his father Paul began to search for an inexpensive functional prosthetic. What he found was this internet video posted by Ivan Owen an inventor in Washington State.
Ivan Owen, Inventor: I’ve always had this vision of people being able to build their own prosthetic device at home.
Michelle: Owen and a collaborator in South Africa designed a hand that could be made by a 3 dimensional printer.
Ivan: It’s essentially like a hot glue gun. There’s a plastic that feeds into it, the printer head gets really hot and it liquefies that plastic and then layer by layer creates an object.
Michelle: The design relies on wrist movement. Downward motions creates cable tension that closes the fingers while a move upward opens them. The assembly instructions were posted for free on the internet so someone like Paul McCarthy in Marblehead, Massachusetts could print it. He took the idea to his son.
Leon: I thought it was a little crazy. He was, “We can print all these fingers and clip them all in.” It was a little too much.
Michelle: The first time you saw it and when you tried it out …
Leon: It was pretty awesome, yeah.
Michelle: What made it awesome?
Leon: I could pick up like a water bottle, [or] like say I could pick up my pencil.
Michelle: What is it like to see him with this?
Paul: Making your kids happy is the most rewarding thing you can have as a dad, right?
Michelle: The price tag was also appealing. Many 3D printers sell for about $2,000, materials are far less expensive.
Paul: This thing costs like $5, $10, whatever. It was nothing.
Michelle: What would a prosthesis cost you?
Paul: 20,000-30,000 dollars?
Michelle: The cost allows father and son to experiment with newer designs.
Paul: When I outgrow a hand we can easily make a new one.
Michelle: It’s a do it yourself solution that was unthinkable before technology made ideas printable.
Paul: That’s cool.
Leon: Yeah.
Michelle: Michelle Miller, CBS News, Marblehead, Massachusetts.
