e-NABLE is a global community of over 1500 members collaborating to make free 3d-printed prosthetic hands available to all who need them. Many of these hands go to children, who face difficulties with traditional prosthetics, due to the fact that they are constantly outgrowing them.
Real life super hero work (Image Source: enablingthefuture.org)
The community consists of engineers, artists, makers, students, parents, occupational therapists, prosthetists, garage tinkerers, designers, teachers, creatives, philanthropists, writers and many others – who are devoting their “Free time” to the creation of open source designs for mechanical hand assistive devices that can be downloaded and 3D printed for less than $50 in materials.
Their work is truly awe inspiring being that a typical prosthetic hand could cost upwards of $50,000. To create something comparable that could produced on a desktop 3D Printer is exactly the type of disruptive use that makes 3D Printing such an exciting technology to work with.
All of e-NABLE’s designs are open source – so that anyone, anywhere – can download and create these hands for people who may need them and so that others can take these designs and improve upon them and once again share with the them with the world.
Image Source: enablingthefuture.org
They have an upcoming event at John Hopkins Hospital where they’ve crowdsourced the printing of as many hands as possible, to be assembled at John Hopkins and then given to children in need. We’ve been busy testing 3DPrinterOS by making hand kits for the upcoming event.
The hand kit at 100 % scale took a bit over 8 hours
Hand kits ready to be shipped
Starting another hand-kit
To use your 3D Printer to make a difference, please visit: http://enablingthefuture.org/
