When Ozzie the goose broke his leg – which was eventually amputated at the joint — he was lucky to find a friend in animal lover Sue Burger. Burger took to South African radio station RSG to seek help for the unlucky fowl who was struggling to cope with just one leg. Enter a team of tech gurus who, after hearing Ozzie’s story, decided to get the bird a new lease on life by way of a 3D-printed prosthetic leg.
Three companies – 3D Printing Systems, digital design firm BunnyCorp, and the Centre for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing at Central University of Technology in South Africa – joined forces to develop the goose’s new limb, reports CNET.
BunnyCorp documented Ozzie’s path to a new leg on its blog. Burger brought her avian friend to the design firm’s offices, where they measured and examined his existing leg and the stump left over from the amputation. After drawing up several designs, BunnyCorp was finally able to fit the bird with the leg on April 3.
“He was a bit confused about his new leg as he has been without one for about 5 months,” the company posted on its blog. “He will need some therapy to assist him and close monitoring.”
The leg is still a work in progress. Ozzie will head to the design firm's office Thursday morning where he will have another fitting. Once Ozzie gets more comfortable with the leg, the company's designers will test out a few more components of the leg – more flexible, rubbery areas, for instance – and then once BunnyCorp is satisfied, they will create the final version, wrote Philip van der Walt, the company's designer and digital sculptor, in an e-mail to FoxNews.com.
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