​Spike likes to play rough. Whether it’s tossing truck tires high in the air or wreaking havoc with the watering system, this 5,500-kilogram (12,000-pound) Asian elephant has earned a reputation as an inquisitive giant. Unfortunately, Spike’s sense of curiosity sometimes gets him into trouble.



Spike moved to the Calgary Zoo in Alberta, Canada, in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew damaged his birthplace home at the Miami Zoo in Florida in the US. His first encounter with the dentist’s chair was in 2002, when the roughhousing teenager broke his left tusk on a tire swing, an event that earned him a shiny new pair of stainless steel crowns.



Six years later, Spike broke his other tusk, this time severely enough that zoo veterinarians were concerned about the possibility of infection. Dr. Doug Whiteside, the Calgary Zoo’s senior staff veterinarian, says it’s not uncommon for male elephants to wear down or break their tusks, but problems can occur if the sensitive pulp is left exposed. The area needs to be protected with a temporary cap until the tooth can grow out away from the pulp. “Elephant tusks are similar to human teeth,” he says. “The main difference is that an elephant’s tusks continue to grow throughout its lifetime, often at a rate of three to four inches [75 to 100 millimeters] per year. If Spike were a wild elephant and had broken his tusk while bashing trees or sparring with other males, he might have faced a long, painful ordeal, possibly leading to premature death.”



Luckily, the playful pachyderm had friends and benefactors willing to lend a helping hand. Whiteside contacted the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, also known as SAIT Polytechnic, the same institution that helped with Spike’s first set of artificial tusk caps. And while the original prostheses worked quite well – until Spike sheared one off, that is – the decision was made to develop more accurate tusk caps with respect to shape and size of the tusks rather than the approximated curved versions machined in 2002.



“Similar to humans being left-handed or right-handed, elephants are either left-tuskers or right-tuskers,” says Whiteside. “Spike is a left-tusker, so that side is a bit bigger. We wanted to replicate this as much as possible.” Using the same fiberglass material a human doctor employs to wrap a broken leg, he cast mirror images of Spike’s tusks and sent them to SAIT. The inside surfaces were scanned and the data transferred to CAD software for solid modeling.



That’s where Mike Desjardins stepped in.

​Desjardins is president of Lab Machine Works Inc., a local machine shop with greater knowledge of prosthetic elephant tusk machining than anyone in Alberta. “I was commissioned to machine the first set,” he says. “Because of the curved shape and the greater size, these were quite a bit more difficult to produce.”



Starting with a pair of 316 stainless steel blanks 20 centimeters (eight inches) in diameter and 58 centimeters (23 inches) long, Desjardins was facing 230 kilograms (500 pounds) of metal removal. He reached out to Sandvik Coromant Area Sales Manager Jim Cordoviz and area representative Scott Jensen, who donated a pair of milling cutters – a CoroMill 390 outfitted with TiAlN-coated GC1030 grade inserts for roughing and a CoroMill 216F ball-nose endmill with a GC2015 CVD-coated insert for finishing.



“Working with SAIT, we split the blanks lengthwise and welded fixturing tabs on each half,” Desjardins explains. “Each piece was then clamped into a Haas VF-2 vertical machining center. The G-code was produced by processing the solid models through our MasterCAM programming system. The actual machining was done without cutting fluid, something that worked surprisingly well. Even so, it took more than 120 hours to finish the project.”



When complete, the metal halves were welded back together and returned to the zoo, where Whiteside and his team safely sedated the rambunctious giant and got to work. Industrial-strength epoxy and dental kits from 3M were used to affix each crown in place, and after a few hours the sleeping elephant woke to a pair of gleaming tusks, surely the envy of his female herd mates.



“I think this project was a great example of how innovative partnerships can work, in this case to enhance the health and welfare of a wonderful species,” Whiteside says. “The community really came together for Spike, and we are very appreciative of the expertise, time, and material donated for this project.”



Sadly for Whiteside, his coworkers and visitors to the Calgary Zoo, Spike and the other elephants there have since moved on. In 2013, zoo officials took the painful decision to relocate him and the three females to other facilities, ones with larger herds, more room to roam and a greater chance at genetic diversity, an important consideration for this endangered species.



If you could ask him, Spike might tell you he misses the Canadian winters, but maybe not – his current address is Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida.

Spokesman Travis Claytor explains that the bull elephant has recently been introduced to the herd of five females and is enjoying a warm and sunny habitat. “Spike is doing quite well in his new home and has instantly made a connection with the trainers at the park,” says Claytor. “We’re excited to have him as part of our family here at Busch Gardens.”



If you decide to pay Spike a visit, don’t spend too much time looking for the elephant with the metal tusk caps. Shortly before leaving Calgary, Spike broke them both off while in musth, a period of heightened sexual activity in male elephants. After consulting with experts on tusk repair, and seeing that Spike’s tusks had started to heal from his last misadventure, zoo officials decided to leave the caps off. Spike’s visits to the dentist’s chair may be a thing of the past.

