ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A St. Petersburg doctor is helping people who need prosthetics and using a 3-D printer to make it happen.
Dr. Rick Williams of Cybernetic Design Solutions is the man behind an artificial arm that needs no batteries or special tools to work.
He created one for a 4-year-old boy using only a 3-D printer and his own design.
"He can dig in the dirt," Williams said of the boy using the arm. "He can do anything he wants. He can be a kid.
"All we did was the equivalent of me giving you a screwdriver or hammer. It’s just a tool. And it’s just one more thing in the toolbox."
It may seem to be a lot more complex than that.
But for Williams, who has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is a retired developer for Hitachi, it is just another creation from his home office.
"Think about a child’s shoes," Williams said. "How many shoes does a child go through until he’s an adult? It’s about the same. So that individual is going to need a lot of these. If a parent doesn’t have a great deal of money, how are they gonna do that? It’s not gonna happen."
It's why the Pinellas County-based Williams said he stopped sending prosthetic designs to other people to create and started designing and creating them himself.
Total coast for the arm he made for the 4-year-old boy? $12
And Williams buys all of the equipment and materials and then donates these prosthetics and doesn't charge anything.
"That boy could do anything he wanted before," Williams said. "The only thing different is now he can do things he wasn’t able to do before but you should see.
"If you saw what he was able to overcome to begin with."