Bolivian toymaker restores limbs, dignity with 3D-printing

As a child rising up in poverty in rural Bolivia, Roly Mamani constructed his personal toys. Now a 34-year-old engineer, he 3D prints limbs for Indigenous compatriots scarred by life-changing accidents.

Mamani funds the endeavor with the cash he makes from promoting robotic toys he makes — his different ardour, which, after constructing his first remote-controlled toy automobile as a toddler, he by no means deserted.

Surrounded by prostheses, vegetation and 3D-printed dinosaurs in his examine, Mamani pores over an arm he’s devising for a boy who misplaced his resulting from an electrical surge.

It’s his function, the engineer advised AFP, “to enhance individuals’s high quality of life.”

The son of small-scale farmers, Mamani grew up in Achocalla, a neighborhood nestled between two lagoons some 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of the capital La Paz, verdant with pasture, greens and tubers.

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With no cash for toys, he began constructing his personal play vehicles from plastic and cardboard at a younger age, upgrading in major college to a motorized model.

Earlier than getting into public college, Mamani labored for 2 years at an vehicle workshop the place he was uncovered to “the primary actual machines I ever noticed.”

Ten years in the past, he opened his personal workshop in Achocalla to construct robotic toys and academic aids.

“You would say I’ve all of the toys I need now,” he mentioned.

Then all the pieces modified when he heard a couple of rural man with out palms and thought to himself: “I could make them for him.”

In 2018, the toymaker of Achocalla got down to discover life-improving options for different disfigured Bolivians together with his 3D printers.

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“Science is sort of a superpower. Robotics is a development, but when it doesn’t deal with necessary issues, it doesn’t suggest something,” he mused.

Greater than 400 made

In opposition to the background noise of printers at work, Mamani advised AFP he can create six items a month.

Since 2018, “we’ve got made greater than 400 prostheses,” he mentioned.

Half have been delivered freed from cost or at the price of manufacturing, funded by his robotics gross sales.

On common, a 3D-printed prosthesis in Bolivia prices about $1,500, greater than 5 instances the minimal wage.

A useful prosthesis — the sort that enables sure actions — can value as a lot as $30,000.

But the general public well being system doesn’t cowl prosthetics, in a rustic the place some 36,100 individuals have bodily and mobility issues, in response to the state-aligned Nationwide Committee of Folks with Disabilities.

Mamani himself chooses the recipients of his donations from the numerous requests he receives, together with from overseas.

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“The individuals in essentially the most want are those that work precarious jobs with out security, which is why they’ve these accidents by which they lose a limb,” he mentioned.

‘A blessing’

Considered one of their beneficiaries is 59-year-old Pablo Matha, who misplaced his imaginative and prescient and proper hand seven years in the past in a mining accident involving dynamite.

After that, “I went out on daily basis to ask for some cash (on the road.) That is the place my good friend Roly and his brother discovered me,” Matha advised AFP.

Mamani’s brother Juan Carlos is a physiotherapist, who helps with the sufferers’ bodily rehabilitation.

Matha mentioned the prosthesis helped him regain his self-respect. He now performs the guitar to earn a dwelling.

He mentioned he used to “really feel individuals me and laughing. However now that I’ve the prosthesis… typically I really feel that I’m like every strange individual.”

Marco Antonio Nina, 26, was one other recipient. As a youngster, engaged on a masonry undertaking, an electrical shock severed his left arm and stunted the proper one.

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“I prefer to sing, however with out the prosthesis it harm to carry the microphone… Now with this, it is a blessing,” he mentioned.

Mamani desires to make use of the popularity he has gained for his work — he has been awarded a US robotics scholarship — to arrange a rehabilitation heart.

“I wish to generate my very own expertise, I’ve to enhance,” he mentioned.

Supply: AFP