If world peace could be achieved with a 3-D printer and a ton of plastic, then Jaden Ramos is working on it, hand by hand.
In mid-February, Ramos, 15, of Greenbrae, a sophomore at Redwood High School in Larkspur, finished work on a 3-D prosthetic of a forearm and hand for a Romanian man who had lost his own in a work accident. The man, his son said in an online plea for help, had no money to get a traditional prosthetic and no support in the poor community.
When he shipped the finished prosthetic to the struggling Romanian family, Ramos had no idea if it would work. A few weeks later, however, he had his answer via a video from the family showing the father picking up packages with the prosthetic hand.
“This is one of my first hands that someone is actually using on a daily basis,” said Ramos, a varsity wrestler and team co-captain at Redwood. “When he sent me the video, I almost teared up — all the work I put in is actually making his life better. It was really heartwarming.”
Ramos’ mother Christina Ramos said her son has always loved tinkering with his hands from the age of 2, when the toddler would build intricate model train tracks on the living room floor.
“Jaden’s always been very tactical,” she said. “He definitely has a gift for these kinds of things.”
Using only photographs and measurements sent from the Romanian man’s family, Ramos spent an average of two to three hours several days a week from December to February tweaking the dimensions of a prototype model of a forearm and hand he found online, and then building the custom plastic body parts using his home 3-D printer.
“He had a stub at his elbow, and I realized I could use a special prosthetic that makes the hand move when he bends his elbow,” said Ramos. “You take the plastic and add some screws, springs and dental rubber bands used for braces.”
Ramos said the forearm part of the prosthetic was the most difficult because “on the pictures, one part (of the man’s arm) looks fat, and the other looks skinny. It was hard see the fat and skin.”
Ramos credits his eighth-grade makers class teacher Jeff Deboi, at Kent Middle School in Kentfield, for noticing Ramos’ love for 3-D printing construction and encouraging it. Deboi, in turn, credits Ramos for the inspiration.
“When we received our first 3-D printer, I observed Jaden standing at the front door of his sixth-grade class at the door with excitement,” Deboi said in an email. “At the end of the day, he rushed over to my room to see the new 3-D printer.”
“He was the first student to design an object to be printed by the printer,” Deboi added. “His first project took 23 hours and 18 minutes to print. As we purchased more 3-D printers, he became more passionate of the potential of each machine.”
One day, Deboi showed Ramos a website, enablingthefuture.org, about an online community, e-NABLE, that matches people who need prosthetics with volunteer 3-D printer geeks who want to build them. Ramos was immediately hooked.
“I always like building models,” he said. “I have a passion for creating things — in my free time, instead of messing around with my friends, I would go to the makers room and work on the 3-D printer.”
Deboi said he could see immediately that Ramos was not only passionate about the technology, but also about how it could help others.
“He printed an example of a prosthetic hand for a child, and labored through the complexities with great hand skills to accomplish the task,” Deboi said. “Jaden, in retrospect, has transformed to a student (who) can master engineering to help others.”
Ramos uses a crowdfunding website to accept contributions from family, friends and supporters to pay for parts, materials and shipping. There is no charge to the people who receive the prosthetics.
Ramos also stops in from time to time at Deboi’s class at Kent Middle School, where Deboi and a group of students have now developed a 3-D club for making prosthetics.
For Ramos, the work of making 3-D prosthetics is gratifying in several personal ways.
“I really enjoy this process,” Ramos said. “Not only is it a cool thing — it also is a way to just help someone’s life.”
Though it’s not world peace, Deboi said Ramos has accomplished a lot.
“Through his engineering skills and compassion, (Ramos) has raised himself to a new level that reaches out across continents to help others — even a far country of Romania,” Deboi said. “It demonstrates that a student’s passion can reach global levels.”
