This project could use your help Originally shared by e-NABLE Calling all Makers! We

3D Printing
, , ,
1

This project could use your help

Originally shared by e-NABLE

Calling all Makers! We are in need of volunteers in Ireland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Haiti, Africa, Argentina, Chile…ok …pretty much anywhere you don’t see a marker on the map!

If you have a 3D printer, are part of an educational institution that has access to printers, run a non profit that has a 3D printer etc and are in some of the underserved areas of our world - and you would like to help make hands for people in need in your area - we can sure use your help!

Please add yourselves to our map of volunteers and then fill out our intake form to get into the system to get matched with one of the many people on our wait list.

Form: Welcome to e-NABLE!

Thank you!

Map: (Click the + button in the upper right corner and enter your location and info and our volunteers will approve your marker and get it on the map as soon as possible!)

2

Out of curiosity, how many people in the world need a finger, hand, arm, leg? It’s a finite number so it’s solvable. I realize that it is a constantly moving target, but how cool that 3d printers will solve this problem one day… And help maintain the demand.

So what other problems will 3d printers one day solve? Let’s get a list. Gates is solving malaria, let’s solve some others in the category of mechanical design.

Brook

3

If you’re looking for problems of human suffering that 3d printing is uniquely suited to solve, the need for prosthetics is probably the top of the list. Standards of living for factory workers is probably on that list too.

Taken to the extreme, I think the development of machines capable of self-replication will eventually result in the obviation of biological humans capable of suffering. A lot of people are pinning their hopes either on preventing biology from being replaced with technology or, on the other hand, on the transference of the minds of biological-born humans into technological bodies. I, for one, think that the ‘children’ of biological humans will be born technological, and biological humans will cede the universe to our technological children the same way our ancestors ceded the Earth to us.

But I digress. The point is, I think that the technology of additive manufacturing itself will solve a lot of the the world’s problems, far more than any other specific application of that technology. That’s the whole reason I think it’s so important to develop this technology, and to keep it open source.

4

Wow! You, my friend, are ALL IN! So how do we tackle #2? Standard of living for factory workers? Or what is a doable #2 in the near term?

Maybe a follow-on #2 would be exoskeletons to allow people to walk who have lost the use of their legs?

What better use of the ability to customize mechanical things than to fit each one specifically to one unique body? On that note, I do think we need easy to use software to better fit prosthetics to an individual. One size does not fit all. I know scaling is easy, but the comfort of each prosthetic is so important to make it useful. Richard (robohand) talks about the safety of prosthetics being tied to good design and fit. Now, I digress.

Reachable near term goals are important to focus such a growing wealth of available printers. Too many are idle or underutilized when considering the potential for good.

Brook

5

3d scanning, even what you can do with a kinect, is enough to help with a lot of fit issues, though there’s also something to be said for parts designed to be more universal and adjustable, in terms on longevity, reusability, rate of deployment, etc.

The real way to improve the living condition of factory workers is to make them not be factory workers. A human should never do a job that a robot can do just as well. Humans should be doing jobs that require the kind of complex reasoning and versatility that robots are not yet capable of, not manual labor (though I’ll admit that I occasionally find it relaxing to step away from my keyboard to solder a big batch of boards).

The obsession with jobs and the “stealing” of them really gets my goat. If your job is something that someone in a third-world country can do, they should be doing it so that their country can become industrialized and their standard of living increased to the point that someone will steal it from them, until the robots are ready to do it. It falls on those of us in the wealthiest nations to discover humanity’s new endeavors, not to stagnate, forcing those standing in line behind us to either stagnate themselves, or find a way to leapfrog us.

We need to always continue forward, and not try to hold others back. The most recent episode of QI had an inspiring demonstration of how caterpillars continually move forward while climbing over each other to build on each other’s progress and move faster as a group than any of them could alone, with each individual cycling from the front of the group to the back, then back to the front, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIBAmA--Qto. We should all learn from this example.

How’s that for a digression?

6

This is hell of an interesting discussion, thank you for your comments. Will add my opinion later.

7

@Whosa_whatsis
I do agree, but only for some parts, if you look at it from work (mechanicial) point of view, you are just right (including caterpillar). I stop following you on the consequence in that chain, when you look closely at why you work, work is not the aim of human, it just to fulfill his necessity (including intellectual), this idea have been largely perverted by greed, when work is associated with money. the result of work is wealth, wealth is not always result of work. but now if you put robot in the middle that give you more to think about the sharing of wealth. What about the human who just have to find work (11 billion of humans by 2100) when paid works will decreased (replaced by machine). the work and money interaction will need to change.

Sorry Brook that comment will not help you in your kind quest of how you can help the humanity.

3D printing at least in the early stage will not created wealth, but comfort (like prothesis), intellectual satisfaction (creativity, design). In a sense it’s good that the 3D object price do not challenge the classic industry, because it make people thinking about improving the object design but also of its real necessity.

8

@StephaneBUISSON I don’t particularly disagree with any of that except that money is not the only reason to work. I do what I do (developing open source machines that I believe will result in the benefits I listed above) primarily for the betterment of humanity (and also because it’s fun), and only modify that work to fit the parameters of something someone will also pay me to do so that I can have the resources I need to continue that work.

Many people do work at a job that they hate just for the money, and their time would be better spent developing ways to develop machines to do those jobs, or ways to eliminate the need for them entirely. Work smarter, not harder. The problem is that a lot of people become intrenched in such jobs and defend them from being taken by machines or by cheaper sources of labor in other countries because they don’t want to have to learn to do something new. As Bertrand Russel said, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

9

Going back to prosthesis, the acquisition of 3D data about a limb stump is hard, scanning is cool but still quite hard and a bit expensive in terms of hardware, software and labour. It’s also hard to take a scanned mesh and mate it with a designed prosthesis.

Ideally we would have a fully parametric model of the human hand (for example) that can be confugured using data from an existing limb or derived from existing anthropometric data for their body type if no reference limb is available.

The interface between stump and prosthesis probably should not be an FDM printed part. The use of some sort of soft conformal pressure spreading foam etc (memory foam?) is probably essential to prevent pressure sores etc. That being the case maybe a combination of foam padding with a rigid backing that can be moulded to the user could be good idea. Polycapralactone, aka polymorph and many other brand names, can be easily formed with mild heat. It is also printable (the first repraps used Polycapralactone as their material).

If we can create a useful hand model from a parametric design that includes a printed part in a user-moldable plastic like PCL or even PLA then we’ve got a pretty good and universal system going.

eNable have made some great progress in design of a parametric hand with the cyborg beast. If we can create some sort of walkthrough wizard web interface to get the input data and then create a bunch of STLs that makers can print and post (along with a payment or bidding system to cover costs so the system is sustainable beyond charity) then the problem is near as dammit solved.

I reckon that enable are onto this and making great progress. It’s the human-prosthesis fitting problem that is hard, hopefully a user moldable interface would fix that.

I also reckon that people are kind and want to help. Printing hands is awesome and if we can make it easy for people to contribute by going onto a site, seeing a request and being able to say ‘yes I’ll print that!’ and then receive STLs there would probably be a lot of participation. People want to help, we just need to make it easy for them to do so.

@Brook_Drumm I’d be really keen to spend some money, even a considerable amount, to make something like this happen.

Being able to create prostheses for people made to measure and on demand for negligible cost would truly be an amazing achievement. It might not quite be curing malaria, but it would be an awesome achievement that is completely possible with technology that we have sitting on the desk next to us and some good will.

10

I would scan the arm (a kinect is sufficient for this purpose) to get the shape/size of the stump and see how far it extends and align it to the prosthetic in software. I would then expand that model to add a few mm of clearance (the exact amount would take a little trial and error) before subtracting it from the shape of a standard (but parameterized) prosthetic (or from a mirrored scan of the opposite limb, if you’re going for something more aesthetic than functional, but for this you probably would want a higher-detail scan). After printing, I would fill the gap with a pliable and bio-compatible material (probably some kind of silicone) to give it a more precise fit without the pressure/wear points that you would get with skin directly against a print.

11

I agree that software is one of the missing links in the prosthetic problem. It’s a complex and interesting case. At worst, printing a prosthetic today could be a feel-good exercise if not correctly matched to a real need. While I do think it’s far better that printing do-nothing’s to fill our shelves, software could improve the success rate of matching a print to someone needing specific things on a prosthetic. Some sort of standardized approach to measurement would be a good step. Even color and material choice might enhance the experience. If measurement, etc automatically created a custom parametric stl that matched the need request with the actual person’s customization needs, we would take a step toward a better system. I’m reminded of one of the early videos I saw of a Robohand on a kid- it was totally oversized and the kid even admitted he doesn’t wear it much due to relative awkwardness. He spoke very positively of the experience, but I couldn’t help but wonder if his life would be further improved if he could request changed and get another one that he liked better. It would be trivial to make him another one.

One other interesting rub is that, at least originally, cheap prosthetics challenged a profit center for certain manufacturers and one cog in the health insurance machine. I’ve met some doctors in the states and abroad that welcomed the work being done, but others are vested in more profitable work or view the whole movement as dangerous or misguided. I mention this, because I do think leaders in the field have yet to step forward and offer their expertise to further the cause completely disconnected to any profit center around the issue. We need doctors, software engineers, cloud service providers, delivery mechanisms, feedback loops… All of it. I don’t expect the herd of well meaning cats to self organize around such a complex problem in any efficient way. Money will be needed with a focussed leadership to guide the ship. Where will this funding and leadership come from? Perhaps a community based effort with crowd funding… Perhaps grants from institutions or government. Time will tell.

Lastly- aware I’m getting long winded - one nuance that worries me is that this type of project is a magnet for positive media attention. I personally know of two very public instances where media attention was leveraged for big profit dollars or for notoriety around brand. In both instances, people were indeed helped, but there was a darker side there too - one of personal gain and inherent self-promotion.

All that said, I am generally encouraged by e-nable and the like, as I know plenty of pure motives are and will be engaged. Good is coming of it and will continue to come of it. This is perhaps THE application which will flesh some of these inherent problems out – as we learn to get over the media hype, the warring brands, develop better tools and better organize the print army around very real and achievable goals.

So far, I have hesitated to endorse such public efforts with my dollars. One reason is that I don’t want Printrbot to appear opportunistic - riding on the backs of charity efforts. I would prefer silent donations from companies based on value decisions, not media coverage or logos flying on home pages. Cynical, yes. The other reason is that projects like this need people more than dollars or machines in a bot farm.

All my opinion. I welcome opposing views!
Brook

12

It’s also worth noting that (at least in the US), prosthetics are regulated by the FDA as medical devices, and must meet certain requirements (my understanding is that this mostly involves the biocompatibility of the materials in contact with skin, but IANAL).

13

Right. But does it matter if they are free? Or acquired by the end user? It’s an end run around regulation, huh?

14

That’s unclear. If the user prints them for him/herself, there’s probably no place for the regulations to be enforced, while selling them would almost certainly make the regulations enforceable. I don’t know which side giving them freely to the user would fall on.