WALKER, Mich. — A West Michigan community makerspace has given a Norton Shores girl a new way to experience the world — one 3-D printed part at a time.
Grand River Makerspace, a community workshop space in the Grand Rapids area, recently completed a custom mobility trainer for Ella Whitman, who was born with a rare genetic disorder affecting her eighth chromosome. The device, assembled by the family themselves at the makerspace, could be among the first steps toward independent movement for a little girl whose future mobility remains uncertain.
Ella’s mother, Laura Whitman, described her daughter’s diagnosis as a deletion, inversion and duplication on the P arm of her eighth chromosome. She uses a book analogy to explain it: a chapter with a missing paragraph, a section that’s been flipped, and a passage that simply repeats itself.
“It then reflects on her motor skills,” Whitman…
