The Road to Rio

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Denise Schindler is officially, according to cycling’s governing body, UCI, the fastest road cyclist in her classification in the world. She is a World Champion, European Cup Winner, German Champion and London 2012 Silver Medallist.

That last one, the silver medal, she’s hoping to upgrade to gold this summer, in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The bulk of the work towards gold will be done in the countless hours Denise spends on track and on the road, but, like any top athlete Denise Schindler is squeezing every last drop out of the equipment and there’s one more piece of equipment to add to the bike, the helmet and the sportswear that the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and co spend hours tinkering with… her prosthetic.

Denise was amputated below the knee since the age of two after an accident, her traditional sports prosthesis are highly customised and precise, they are usually hand-made by orthopaedic technicians, they are expensive, they are not accessible. She hopes with the help of Autodesk and 3D printing technology to not only add a further competitive edge to her medal hunt in Rio but to make sport more accessible to those who require prosthesis.

“We started working on a new way of producing my prosthetic one and a half years ago,” Denise tells me at the hip re:publica 2016 even in Berlin. “It was very challenging, we started by scanning my limb and tried to do a fitting directly from the software but we discovered that the traditional way using plaster cast gives the technician a lot of chance to build structure around specific areas, that person is an expert at feeling that certain areas can bear weight, certain areas might be too bony to do so, the scan can't detect that. The main challenge was to find a way in Fusion360 that we could have the scan and input that orthopaedic expertise.”

Once the team including a Fusion360 expert, an orthopaedic technician and Schindler herself had a design they were happy with they used FDM printing to test it out immediately. “I was very happy that it just fitted,” Schindler enthused. “I was able to test it for stability and power on the track doing various exercises like starts and sprints. Fitting was fine but I needed more stability for the sprints, I was losing power because it was too flexible. In that first version the designer tried to soften a lot of points to take pressure points away for my limb but it was too soft.”

Back to the drawing board, but that’s just the beauty of digital design, the team went through 50 to 60 iterations before getting to the point whereby they were happy with the prosthetic. “Every time the designer thought he was finished I came up with a new idea, a new challenge for him. When I was ready then my prosthesis expert would come along and ask for something extra.”

Going for gold

The finished prosthetic was printed in Polycarbonate using a Stratasys Fortus FDM machine and painted by hand to finish, Denise says she plans on adding a go-faster-stripe as well as a UCI certification sticker before Rio 2016. The prosthetic bulges at the top for comfort around the limb and becomes sleeker and more aerodynamic towards the shin area; the bottom is flat and is clamped directly onto the bike pedal.

A traditional prosthesis would weigh more than 1.5 kilograms, this weighs under 1 kg. It can also take production time from about 10 weeks to five days and be made for about a quarter of the price. A week before showcasing her Paralympic prosthetic to this magazine editor Denise had been showcasing it to Angela Merkel and POTUS himself, Barack Obama.

Of course, the genesis of this idea was to propel her to glory on the road and on the track but as spokesperson for a community of people who require amputees, Denise sees this as an opportunity to radically alter the way amputees approach sport.

“Sport for me during my childhood was not a big deal,” Denise recalls. “I was always last in sports class and it was nothing I had fun with. Later on in life I figured out that sport can be really nice, something I can do without pain, something I can have fun with, that's really a door opener to a person's confidence. We have the chance with 3D printing to create a very custom made product for a price that is affordable, if this was the case the average amputee would buy prosthetics like everybody else buys expensive shoes.”

Denise says that now that her scan data is in the system and they know it works and fits, she can create a specifically tailored prosthetic to different activities. “Just like you have business shoes to look good, everyday shoes for comfort, climbing shoes for climbing this could be the case for prosthetics, so I love diving, I will just use my diving leg.”

The other side of the coin

In 2013 as the civil war in his country reached crisis point, Syrian, Asem Hasna, left his mathematical studies to volunteer as a paramedic. He was loading injured people into his ambulance when an explosion severed his leg. With his life hanging in the balance his medical colleagues sent him off to Jordan where he was amputated and able to get sufficient treatment to be able to walk on a prosthetic leg at the fifth operation asking.

While he was hospitalised and undergoing rehabilitation he trained to become a prosthetic technician in order to help out other Syrian amputees, here Asem cameinto contact with Refugee Open Ware (ROW) and saw how 3D printing could be used to create basic prosthetics for those in dire need. He was immediately addicted, devouring 3D printing texts and teaching himself how to make a functional prosthesis on a basic FDM 3D printer. As ROW’s 3D Printing expert Asem was able to help hundreds of victims of war not just physically but psychologically too.

Asem joined Denise Schindler on stage at re:publica to discuss how empowering the amputees to become makers gives them a psychological boost as well as the physical aid from the orthotic itself. On stage Asem discussed Zane, a six-year-old Yemeni boy who lost his hand and was badly burned in an explosion during fighting, ROW made him a 3D printed prosthetic, not any old prosthetic but one in the style of his hero Ben 10.

“When we met Zane for the first time he was scared,” Asem said. “He was scared because all of his body was burned but when he started to see this Ben 10 hand he started to be more relaxed, the first day he didn’t take off the hand, only when he went to sleep did his father remove the hand.”

Having seen directly, at a makerspace in London, the disappointment of parents whose child’s affliction was not suitable for a 3D printed prosthetic, I asked Asem if all these feelgood stories we see of 3D printed prosthesis (guilty as charged on that front) could possibly be a negative thing?

“3D printed prosthetics are not the best solutions ever, there are bionic hands that costs tens of thousands of euros but for now they are providing an alternative solution for people who can't get access to advanced healthcare,” Asem explained. “There are 100,000 amputees in Syria, you have two choices you can provide cutting edge prosthesis to one hundred of them or to provide basic arms or limbs to as many as you can.”

“There are 100,000 amputees in Syria, you have two choices you can provide cutting edge prosthesis to one hundred of them or to provide basic arms or limbs to as many as you can.” - Asem Hasna

But Asem sees that changing, Asem sees people like Denise Schindler and believes that more innovation at the top of the market will push prices down and allow for greater innovation in the open-source end were he and ROW operate. “I really believe in the future we will have low cost bionic perfect prosthetics accessible to everyone.”

Denise thrives on motivation, she is smashing through the barriers and not just breaking records but opening doors to accessibility, perhaps opening doors to people who will be come her competitor. “I hope my story is an inspiration not to stop,” she says. “An inspiration to see the things amputees can do, I hope people see what I can do, how I chose my path, how I cycle my path and start to ask for things that they want to have, to do the things they did before. I think this is the biggest thing I can do.”

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