Tucson 13-year-old creates 3-D-printed prosthetic hands

Teen boys in tan and khaki uniforms crowded around a table at the Lutheran Church of the Foothills on Wednesday, each reaching for one of the blue, red and black plastic hands held together with strings and pins.

Those boys were members of the Boy Scouts of America Catalina Council Troop 100, and at the center was Vishakk Rajendran, 13, who explained to his fellow Scouts and their parents the mechanics of his creations: 3-D-printed prosthetic hands.

“I was interested in how prosthetic hands worked, and I wanted to improve the technology,” he said. “On the other hand, I wanted to help people who can’t afford them but need them.”

The Basis Tucson North eighth-grader prints prosthetic hands using a 3-D printer, assembles them and works with a nonprofit organization to deliver them to Tibet, Haiti, Syria and elsewhere. It started out as Rajendran’s Boy Scouts service project, but quickly evolved into a communitywide effort involving other troop members, parents and friends.

Rajendran’s 3-D-printed prosthetic hands are free to those receiving them. Each costs about $30 to $40 to make, compared with about $3,000 to $5,000 for a cosmetic hand without function and $20,000 or more for a myoelectric arm, according to a Bioengineering Institute Center for Neuroprosthetics market analysis.

He works with e-NABLE, a global network of volunteers and the Enable Community Foundation, a nonprofit that supports e-NABLE.

There are 16 device designs and additional gauntlet options, available for free to volunteers as open-source contents online, said Melina Brown, the foundation’s director of case management and quality assurance. Anyone can download the designs and volunteer, but the network asks that volunteers first send a sample hand to make sure it’s functional.

Volunteers can make generic sizes or connect with families through the foundation to receive exact measurements.

For one of his 25 or so that he plans to make, Rajendran is working with a family of a 6-year-old in India that has been trying unsuccessfully for the past year and a half to get a prosthetic hand.

E-NABLE started out with a mechanical special-effects artist Ivan Owen posting a video of a metal hand he made as part of his steampunk costume, according to the network’s history. His video caught the attention of a South African carpenter, Richard Van As, who lost his fingers in an accident.

Owen and Van As collaborated to make replacement fingers, and subsequent videos led to Jon Schull, a Rochester Institute of Technology professor and a founder of the Enable foundation in 2014.

The e-NABLE network has grown to include nearly 8,000 volunteers, one of who is Rajendran.

There are many Boy Scouts and young people who volunteer, Brown of the Enable foundation said. But few are as dedicated as he is.

“Vishakk stands out as one of our Boy Scouts that has been very self-sufficient and very loyal to what he’s doing,” she said. “He has stuck with it without needing a ton of guidance.”

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Rajendran said he first became fascinated with 3-D printers after attending a Scouts event at Raytheon. He then learned about e-NABLE from a Boy Scouts magazine by chance and decided he needed to help.

His family bought him a 3-D printer for $1,200, and he also gets help from a Tempe-based company called STAX3D.

When Rajendran approached his father, Rajendran Subramaniam, with the idea of working with e-NABLE, his father thought, “It’s a little expensive.” But he decided that the good far outweighed the cost.

“I always think spending on education is not an expense,” he said. “It’s an investment for me.”

Subramaniam said he had his son join the Scouts to teach him leadership and how to be a good citizen. Also, because Subramaniam is an immigrant from India, he wanted his son to have the experience of growing up in an organization emblematic of American culture.

“I’m very proud of what he’s doing — both the technical part and the concern he has for others,” he said.

But Rajendran could not do the project alone. Many Scouts and school friends helped him raise funds by selling wreaths and coupon cards during the holiday season and helped assemble the hands as well, Rajendran said. Parents and community members also donated money. Altogether, the project raised about $750.

He has made only two hands on his own, he said. Seven were made with friends on weekends and weekday nights. Through an event at Basis Tucson North on Feb. 13, Rajendran and other Scouts who are trained in assembling the hands will teach other students to make an additional 15.

Patrick Robinson, the scoutmaster of Troop 100, said Rajendran’s project has ignited the interest in science for the other boys and had a positive influence on them.

“Whenever you have someone who really pushes the boundaries in a good way, it helps other people to think, ‘Maybe I can do that,’” he said.

The Boy Scouts of America is trying to incorporate more science, technology, engineering and math into its activities, Robinson said. Rajendran’s project provides an opportunity for that, in addition to giving kids experience in collaboration, leadership, fundraising and benefiting the community.

With the Feb. 13 event at Basis Tucson North, Rajendran’s project will officially be over, but he said he will continue to volunteer for e-NABLE and build prosthetic hands. In fact, the project inspired him to ponder a career in biomechanical engineering.

With his previous career interest in medicine and general interest in biology, biomechanical engineering would be the best of both worlds, he said.

“I feel like this is what I would be doing in the future,” he said. “This project is kick-starting that career for me.”