"We want Shea to feel special:" UWM professor uses 3D printer to help young girl & mom on a mission

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- A 10-year-old girl with a dream, and a professor with a 3D printer. How they became connected is a lesson in how the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

With a viola tucked firmly under her chin, 10-year-old Shea Stollenwerk strummed the instrument under a sign reading "the sum of us is greater than all of our parts." Not that she needs a reminder.

"I just say that I was born that way," Stollenwerk said.

She was born with a partial palm, half of a thumb and no fingers on her right hand. She was only able to play her viola with the use of a prototype adaptive device. Of course, her teacher was always there to help -- but what she really needed was a hand.

"I asked her for a 3D printed hand," Stollenwerk said.

"Put it on her Christmas list about five days before Christmas to be exact," Shea's mother, Ranee Stollenwerk said.

"And she said Santa probably wouldn't know how to make one," Shea Stollenwerk said.

It turned out, they didn't have to go as far as the North Pole. There was a different kind of workshop just off North Avenue in Milwaukee.

UW-Milwaukee Art & Design Professor Frankie Flood soon heard from a mom trying to help her daughter.

"I received an email," Flood said.

"I have no idea how to do all of this. I'm not very technically -- I'm challenged. I'm not very good at all of this stuff, so we decided to ask for help," Ranee Stollenwerk said.

Intrigued, Flood found a group online called "e-NABLE," which specializes in creating prosthetic hands. He gathered information and decided to give it a try.

"I said, 'you know, this is something I would like to do,'" Flood said.

"I think it was actually Christmas Eve that he got in contact with us and he would be really exited to work with us and make it happen," Ranee Stollenwerk said.

Flood enlisted his fellow design professor Adream Blair.

"There is an opportunity in higher education to connect to the community and connect to the community in really meaningful ways, and as a method in class, it turns out really wonderful, thoughtful students," Blair said.

Shea Stollenwerk's hand was a perfect project for students learning to design and create using 3D printers.

"We pretty much teach students how to design and build almost anything they want to create, and then how to make it out of actual material," Flood said.

The process involves sketching and then creating digital models on the computer and sending the images over to the printer to be turned into three-dimensional objects.

"Just think of it as an inkjet printer that's printing something, but then you're printing multiple pages that make up that object. It's drawing a two-dimensional drawing of an object layer by layer and slowly what's happening is the bed it's being printed on is lowering," Flood said.

A traditional medical prosthetic could cost thousands of dollars, but these 3D printed hands only cost about $25. They're not quite the same as medical devices, but these "robo-hands" as they call them have a much higher "cool" quotient.

"It's kind of cool, and it's more of a toy. It's kind of exciting looking. I think the ability of the child to pick out colors is something that's unique. I think it should be superhuman and I think it should be something that is better than a hand -- that's something that resonates with the designers. How do we create something better than a hand? We want Shea to feel special," Blair said.

"He said that I could choose any color I wanted and any design I wanted and he's try to make it work. I have a pink one, a purple one and a pink and purple one," Shea Stollenwerk said.

All of a sudden, Shea Stollenwerk could do things she could never do before.

"I couldn't catch it. I thought it would be cool to grab stuff that I couldn't before," Shea Stollenwerk said.

But the hand was limited, and didn't allow Shea Stollenwerk to hold her viola bow.

"Now we're looking at adaptive devices, so things that allow the children to be able to do certain activities, so in Shea's case we've been looking at how to make a bow holder so she can play her viola," Flood said.

That is music to a mother's ears.

"Their generosity and their kindness is a gift in and of itself. I count them as my friends. I count them as a family member. I always tell Frankie, 'I don't have enough words to tell you thank you. I just don't,'" Ranee Stollenwerk said.

No words perhaps, but there is a melody of gratitude that seems to be saying just as the whole world is greater than its parts, one part has made a girl whole.