Learning Blade: Prosthetic Hand Mission

thingiverse

Objective: To take students understanding of prosthetics from the Learning Blade Dolphin Mission and apply that to a real world engineering design project. Description: – Students will learn about and an organization called e-NABLE which partners groups with 3D printers and individuals, primarily children, around the world who are in need of prosthetic hands. Standards NGSS Overview and Background Having viewed the eNABLE website the students will see that even though the Raptor Reloaded hand is a great prosthetic device, it can still be improved upon. As individuals or groups, students will be choosing an activity that the Raptor Hand, as it is right now, cannot do as best as it could. Students will be choosing an activity that a child using the Raptor Reloaded would like to do better. Then they will be researching an animal that can do that activity really well, and use the adaptation that has allowed that animal to do their chosen task well, and finally redesign the raptor hand with that animal's adaptation in mind. Lesson Plan and Activity Before students start creating their own prosthetic devices let them explore the e-NABLE website at enablingthefuture.org to learn about their mission. On this site, students can watch videos showing the process of creating the prosthetic hands for individuals and the can also see the various prosthetic hands that can be downloaded directly from the site. Later on, in the Mission challenge students will be using TinkerCAD to create, download and 3D print their prosthetic hands. See the TinkerCAD Guide on how to set up TinkerCAD for your class and the process students will use to design, create, and 3D print their prosthetic hands. Show students a complete Raptor Reloaded hand, or if time and materials allow, have them assemble a few hands in class.http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:596966 Have students discuss the following questions: How could this prosthetic hand impact the lives of people, especially children that have never had a prosthetic hand before? What things can a child do with this prosthetic hand? What activities would still be difficult to do with this prosthetic hand? Students will now be challenged with the idea that, even though the Raptor Reloaded hand is a great prosthetic device, it can still be improved upon. As individuals or groups, students will be choosing an activity that the Raptor Hand, as it is right now, cannot do as best as it could. Students will be choosing an activity, researching an animal that can do that activity really well, understand the adaptation that has allowed that animal to do their chosen task well, and redesign the raptor hand with that animals adaptation in mind. a. To help guide students through this process they can work through the Raptor Re-imagined handouts found below. The entire hand will not have to be redesigned by the students. They will still use all parts of the original Raptor Reloaded hand, but the will be recreating the fingertips. For this, they can choose between either the 4 fingertips, which fuse all of the 4 fingertips together into one large adaptation. Or, they can redesign each fingertip separately. Both of these redesigns are described in further detail in the TinkerCAD Guide for this mission, found below. Note: Depending on how many groups you have working at the same time you will want to print out as many full Raptor Reloaded hands so that students can attach, demonstrate, and present their redesigns at the end of this project. Also, the groups that decide to work on the 4 Finger design will need to use the double knuckle pins. One knuckle pin will be inserted on each side since the two middle fingers cannot be accessed with a single knuckle pin during assembly. Extensions: Have students watch and discuss the following TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics?language=en In this TED talk, world record-breaker at the 1996 Paralympic games, discusses her use of 12 different prosthetic legs and the different powers that they each give her. Sign up your class for the e-NABLE community. Get connected with individual around the world that are need of prosthetic hands and make a service-learning project out of it. You are now ready to send the STL files to your 3D printing. If time allows post back onto the original Thingiverse file with pictures of your student's designs. Materials Needed 3D print a completed Raptor Reloaded hand which can be found at Thingiverse #596966. 3D print Raptor Reloaded Knuckle Pins for single finger designs found at Thingiverse #596966 3D print LB Raptor Reloaded Double Finger Pins. One set for each redesign using the 4 finger set.These pins will be inserted on opposite sides of the raptor hand so that all 4 fingers are attached to the Proximal Phalanges - See Example File image above) Download Single Finger and Combined 4 Finger .STL files for student redesigns or give them the links below to. You can also access the file with the follow links. LB Raptor Hand 1 Fingerhttps://www.tinkercad.com/things/4tXK68Wxg38-lb-raptor-hand-1-finger/edit LB Raptor Hand 4 Finger Sethttps://www.tinkercad.com/things/gqoejxowVBS-lb-raptor-hand-4-fingers