{"id":475,"date":"2011-05-10T09:15:29","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T13:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/example.org\/evolution-of-an-inventor"},"modified":"2011-05-10T09:15:29","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T13:15:29","slug":"evolution-of-an-inventor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2011\/05\/evolution-of-an-inventor.html","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of an inventor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Index2HR\"<\/a> While drafting today\u2019s press release<\/a>, we spent time speaking with X-Finger <\/a>inventor Dan Didrick and learned more about how he got his start helping people. Believe it or not, it was trying to scare the pants off of people. As a child, he loved using materials from his father\u2019s dentist office to make movie-quality monster masks. By seventh grade, the budding special effects artist was selling his instructional video on mask-making through creepy Fangoria<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n

But then the tables turned. Dan saw something that scared him<\/em>. A cancer patient arrived at his father\u2019s office missing nine teeth and the better part of her upper lip and nose. His dad could only do so much. He could make the false teeth. \u201cCan you help with the rest?\u201d he asked his son.<\/p>\n

No problem.<\/p>\n

Dan whipped up a lifelike latex lower face. For the first time in his life, he was creating a mask to make someone less<\/em> frightening. He stepped into his father\u2019s office just in time for the fitting. \u201cHer reaction changed my life,\u201d Dan recalls. \u201cAll of a sudden, I saw a way for the talents I\u2019d been developing to actually benefit society.\u201d<\/p>\n

When working in Japan, Dan found his latex skills would help the workers who lost fingers on the factory lines. Back home, while working with prosthetists who made back braces, he got a call for help. A patient was not only missing fingers, he was deaf. Since the patient communicated with his fingers before the injury, losing them was like contracting permanent laryngitis.<\/p>\n

\u201cLatex fingers were of no benefit to him,\u201d Dan thought. \u201cHow can I make these bend?\u201d<\/p>\n

Over next five years, he figured it out \u2013 with the help of SolidWorks software<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n<\/object>
\n <\/p>\n

Today Dan is also trying to help children whose insurance companies deny them coverage because they grow out of their prosthetics too fast. As with the adult line of X-Fingers, the costs of producing children\u2019s X-Fingers are enormous because of the variation in injuries and finger dimensions. Dan established the nonprofit 5013c World Hand Foundation<\/a> to cover costs for starting up X-Fingers for children.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Learn more about X-Fingers in today\u2019s news release: https:\/\/www.solidworks.com\/sw\/news\/167_11642_ENU_HTML.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Index2HR\"<\/a> While drafting today\u2019s press release<\/a>, we spent time speaking with X-Finger <\/a>inventor Dan Didrick and learned more about how he got his start helping people. Believe it or not, it was trying to scare the pants off of people. As a child, he loved using materials from his father\u2019s dentist office to make movie-quality monster masks. By seventh grade, the budding special effects artist was selling his instructional video on mask-making through creepy Fangoria<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n... Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":2412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,14,18],"tags":[449,19],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-stories","category-design","category-solidworks","tag-customer","tag-solidworks-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}