14 DAY TRIAL // Prosthetic hands and feet have been one of the greatest beneficiaries of 3D printing technology, bringing costs down by a factor of one thousand while actually enhancing functionality. It's just a shame that you can't use prosthetics for pets that easily.
There is another way to help animals though, at least if it's the forelegs that took a hit at some point in the past and had to be amputated. TurboRoo is evidence of that.
What is it, you may ask? Basically, it's a cart. A cart that gave a certain puppy a pair of wheels, allowing it to run around all over the place instead of struggling to push himself with his hind legs alone.
The puppy in the picture gallery is called TurboRoo. It is a Chihuahua that was not hurt, but born with a birth defect that prevented its forelegs from growing.
And since dogs aren't like T-Rexes, which are capable of perfectly walking on the rear legs and having very small forelimbs, that means that TurboRoo's life has been a hard one.
A breeder dropped off TurboRoo at a vet's office about a month ago, sparking the sympathy of employees there. One of them, a technician by the name of Ashley Looper, adopted him permanently.
She and the others tried several times to make a good cart, but they were never satisfied with the results, until a mechanical engineer named Mark Deadrick stepped up and offered a solution.
The solution is the cart you see before you. Deadrick is the president of a company called 3dyn, which normally makes parts for cars and aircraft and has done so for 20 years.
The device – or contraption – he created is a fair bit more sophisticated than anything Ashley Looper and her associates tried to do and gets the job done well.
Sure, he had to go through three different versions before he was satisfied with the design (the second was too small, for example), but trial and error is always a factor.
He used thumbnail measurements form photos of TurboRoo, then a 3D modeling software to design the cart itself. Finally, a MakerBot Replicator 3D printed was used to create the cart in about 4 hours (a surprisingly short time). Normal skateboard wheels were added as a final touch.
Deadrick may or may not make other carts for TurboRoo as the puppy grows larger and eventually matures into an adult Chihuahua.
