CHICOPEE – Thanks to the talent of a Chicopee Comprehensive High School senior, an 11 year-old boy in the city will be receiving a prosthetic hand free of charge, Ben Allard, a senior, with his CAD teacher Thomas Grzelak, designed the hand and then fabricated it with one of the school’s 3-D printer.

Grzelak’s wife knew of the child who had only one hand and told her husband about the situation.

Allard explained he first went to a website that offered plans for an artificial hand. Then he had to design them to fit an 11-year-old.

This is the first time a student at the high school has made a prosthetic for someone, Grzelak said.

“It’s nice to know something I made is going to help someone out in the world,” Allard said.

He said the project had “a lot more challenges that I first thought.”

One of those challenges was “figuring out the mix between durable and comfortable,” he said.

The child has movement of his wrist on the affected arm, which Allard used as the way to open and close the fingers of the hand.

Allard explained the way the plastic is used to create the prosthetic creates a lightweight appliance. It can also be easily adjusted to made the firmer looser or tighter.

“The entire hand is very modifiable,” Allard said. The advantage offered by that feature is the hand can “grow” with the child, he said.

Because of the design and the attributes of the 3-D printing process, Allard said repairing the hand if something broke – such as a finger – is much easier.

The project took 30 to 40 hours to complete over a two-week period, Allard said. The traditional way to make such a hand would take much loner. The hand took 24 hours to “print.”

Allard will be attending Keene State College in New Hampshire and studying product design sustainability.  

Allard said when he entered middle school he was very interested in developing new renewable energy sources. “Science and math – my entire life I’ve been interested them.

This latest project has opened his eyes to other possibilities.

“My goal is to help people in the future,” Allard said.