Student creates prosthetic leg for teacher
Rising senior wants to pursue career perfecting artificial limbs
ASHBURNHAM » Oakmont Regional High School student Isabella Allen took her passion for prosthetics and funneled it into a worthy project — creating a prosthetic leg for her teacher.
The 17-year-old Allen designed and constructed a prosthetic leg for history teacher and boys’ soccer team coach R. Lincoln Stiles Jr. as part of her junior year independent study project this past school year and presented it to him last month.
“I had known I wanted to go into making prosthetic limbs for a couple years, but I wanted to try to make one to see if it was something I really wanted to do,” Allen said. “I brought it up to one of my engineering teachers, Mr. (Peter) Jones, that I wanted to make a prosthetic in the winter of sophomore year and he told me I should ask Mr. Stiles.”
Stiles Jr. lost his right foot in a car acci
dent when he was 17 and has worn a prosthetic leg for the last 31 years.
“When Bella came to ask me about helping her with her project, I was eager to help her with whatever direction she chose to go,” he said. “Over the course of the independent study she met with me, and we discussed what was possible in designing a prosthetic with what materials and technology she had at her disposal.”
Allen, who has lived in Ashburnham since she was 6 months old, will be entering her senior year at Oakmont this fall. She said the 90-day independent project was supposed to be done the first half of the school year but got pushed due to the pandemic.
“Originally school was hybrid, and my class was every other day, so I was only in school to work on the prosthetic once a week,” she said. “In this time, I did a lot of research and computer aided drawing to model the limb I was thinking of.”
Allen shadowed Max Nigrosh at Hanger Clinic in Leominster, a certified prosthetist/orthotist that works primarily with prosthetic patients.
“(I) was able to bounce ideas off of him to see what was possible, then I started building,” she said.
Her first design was a 3D printed model with a metal hinge joint for the ankle.
“This design snapped under Mr. Stiles’ weight so with two weeks left of the year, I completely redesigned a limb that would not snap and would be more comfortable for Mr. Stiles,” she recalled. “I put some extra time in researching at home and designing the final limb after school.”
Stiles Jr. said the first prosthetic Allen designed
did not support his weight as he walked.
“When I broke the first design Bella’s eyes sunk and she looked a little discouraged, but she went right back to work and redesigned a better product,” he said. “When she saw me jump on the new prosthetic and it didn’t break, her eyes gleamed with excitement and accomplishment. That’s the greatest look one can get, is watching our students succeed and learn what they can accomplish and I’m grateful that I was able to play a small part in Bella’s accomplishment.”
Stiles Jr. said Allen’s independent study project “was designed for her to learn about the engineering, design, and manufacture of a prosthetic.”
“She built me a prosthetic that is wearable and that supports me using old parts of prosthetics and other newer parts that she designed,” he said.
Allen said she has known Stiles Jr. since she
was a young girl — he was her softball coach. She said her technology engineering teacher Gregory Secino, who oversaw her project, was instrumental in helping her make the prosthetic limb for Stiles Jr. a reality.
“Mr. Secino was very influential and helpful in the creation of the limb and guided me through the process,” she said. “He taught me how to use new tools and helped me find all the material I needed, from welding the piece of steel that made up the top of the foot to finding the spring needed for the ankle.”
Allen utilized her school’s renowned robotics program and a 3D printer for the project and said she spent about $10 buying supplies for it.
“I reused a lot of material in the engineering wing, and I also reused one of Mr. Stiles’ old sockets because it is 3D scanned to fit his residual limb which I did not have the technolo
gy to do,” she said.
Stiles Jr. said that while the prosthetic Allen designed and created is not something he can wear for long periods of time as she had to use a socket from an old prosthetic that does not fit his stump as well as it used to, he is thankful for her efforts and glad she got some hands-on experience in the field of prosthetics.
“She took that socket and added new components to the socket as part of her learning the design process,” Stiles Jr. said. “To no fault of her own, Bella was limited in what she could use for supplies, technology, and materials as she designed the prosthetic. Prosthetics cost approximately $14,000 for the type that I wear daily, and Bella and the school just didn’t have that kind of capital or technology to make and design a prosthetic that could serve the purpose of me wearing it daily. However, the fact that she designed and built something that I could walk on, jump on and wear in a pinch is still quite impressive and something that no other student has
ever accomplished or even tried.”
Allen said she plans to go into the prosthetics field.
“I want to make bionic limbs which have sensors on them and are able to move like an actual limb,” she said.
Allen said Stiles “was very impressed” with the final project and that she was able to do it, and “very happy about it.”
“It made me realize that I would be able to actually go into this field and pursue this as a career because I really did enjoy making the limb,” she said.
When it comes to college, she said Massachusetts Institute of Technology is her “dream school because one of the professors there is one of the best bionic leg makers in the world.”
Allen has softball tournaments every weekend this summer, which she plans to play in college, and is also attending in a three-week biomedical engineering program at the Boston Leadership Institute.
“In past years, they have
printed prosthetic limbs and gone to one of the prosthetics making companies in Boston,” she said. “They were previously recognized as one of the top six biomedical engineering programs in the country.”
Stiles Jr. said he commends Allen “for all the hard work and effort that she put into her project.”
“Bella is such a compassionate young woman when it comes to helping people,” he said. “She looked at this project from a perspective of how she could take something that interests her, and use her talent and knowledge to, in this case, make something that could help someone else.
“Her goal is to be able to help amputees have better prosthetics that can help them live active lives. This independent study is just the beginning for Bella to learn the ins and outs of design, engineering, and patient care when it comes to prosthetics,” he said.
“It meant a great deal to me that she would ask if I would be willing to help her with her project,” he said.