Canine Prosthetics

This is a side project started 2 weeks before Christmas when we met Dr. Ed Strachan at Habourview Prosthetic and Orthotic center for our Capstone project on prosthetic socket. He was wondering where 3D printed could fit in to this world. My partner Bruno and I said that basically everything. He told us about this dog from Korea named Journey. Journey was thrown into fire (What!!!), and she managed to survive the cruel event and lost 2 front paws. As she walked on the residual paws, the skin irritated her, and she started to hop. There are 2 prosthetic center for animals located in Denver, CO and Florida. Journey's owner- Kathy and David would do anything for the poor thing, so they contacted the one in Denver as it is closest to home-Bothell, Washington. But the prosthetic center did not even see their patients because they sent them all of the chunky sockets, and Journey did not like them.

This is Journey and one of her front paw.

The white thing is the mold of Journey's right paw and that was all we have to work with for the first month. It was very difficult because neither me or Bruno had experience with working with 3D scan, so we ended up working with unclean scan for days,

I used my Solidworks skill to design the socket for Journey. The tricky part was, in order to have a comfortable socket, that it had to be in the shape of the limbs just like shoes. As we couldn't get the clean scan of the mold. This step took all the time.

Printed model to consult with Dr. Ed.

Journey's first fitting. As her front left paw oriented in an angle, the rocker kept sliding off. Right paw was okay, but she quite had not familiar with shoes.

We attached the rocker to the bottom of the foot instead of the back to avoid obstacle that she could run into such as tree branches, wires,... We also added the plate to help her not falling on the side because of the angle of her paws.

We also added foam in the middle to create comfort.