e-NABLE e-NABLE Presentations/Interviews, 21 Oct 2015

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From YouTube: 3-D Printed Prosthetics | SciTech Now

Description

Jon Schull, co-founder of e-Nable, discusses how his organization is making low-cost 3-D printed prosthetics available to children around the world.

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It’s estimated that one in 2,000 children are born with a hand or arm abnormality, but the cost of a mechanical hand or arm can be prohibitive for children who will quickly outgrow them. Now, with just $10 to $20 worth of plastic, 3-D printers are being used to create fully functioning mechanical hands or arms for children. Jon Schull is the co-founder of e-Nable, an organization dedicated to connecting 3-D printers around the globe to those in need of a hand, literally.

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“SciTech Now” is a new weekly, half-hour newsmagazine program focusing on “the nexus of new ideas.” Hosted by Hari Sreenivasan, anchor of “PBS NewsHour Weekend” and a senior correspondent for the nightly program, “SciTech Now” tackles topics including technology, scientific discovery and innovation.

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A

It's estimated that 1 in 2,000 children are born with a hand or arm abnormality, but the cost of a mechanical hand or arm can be prohibitive for children who will quickly outgrow them now, with just ten to twenty dollars worth of plastic. 3D printers are being used to create fully functioning mechanical hands or arms for children. E naval is an organization dedicated to connecting 3d printers around the globe to those in need of a hand. Literally Jon Schull, the co-founder of e naval, joins us now to discuss how this new technology is transforming live.

A

So why start enable.

B

Because we could, we weren't sure we could, but the possibility arose that we could harness what has turned out to be a global community of five to fifty to a hundred thousand digital humanitarians. We have 5,300 members today, but we grow by one to three percent every single week, so we're optimistic to harness this global community of humanitarians to start developing new solutions for underserved populations and we've started with these 3d printed prosthetic hands because there's sort of a sweet spot for this.

B

Many of these emerging trends- 3d printing distributed manufacturer mass customization, digital philanthropy and so on. It.

A

Used to be the 3d printer used to cost several thousand dollars, I mean they used to be the size of in a washing machine and it was in a lab far away just an idea. Now, what's the what's, the cost now.

B

Well, you can still spend a few thousand dollars, but you can also spend four or five hundred dollars and that's enough to get into the game and you'll remember that laser printers used to cost thousands of dollars. So in a few years these things are going to be just commodities that everyone has, and meanwhile there's already a distributed factory smeared all over the globe that can begin making devices for.

A

How does a Wordle, how does your team of digital philanthropist get from an idea, or, let's say a small child- comes to them in some country, not in the United States and says it's evident that they need a hand sure. How does he Nabal jump in well.

B

You know news reports crop up all over the place these days about a 3d printed hand given to a child by a volunteer on the internet. They reach out to us. They can go to our website enabling the future org. They can send an email to. Let's get started at enabling the future org and they say I have a printer and I want to help or they say, I need a hand. Can you hook me up with someone right and we have human beings, also volunteers?

B

Who will do that matchmaking and they will assign a maker to a recipient, often a child with a family, and they will work together to take the measurements customize a design in some cases using some free software, we call hand ematic that will produce a scaled model. That's right for the particular person mm-hmm, the volunteers will assemble, it print will print it, they will assemble it and they will then provide it to the kid.

B

The kid will typically put it on and without quite knowing what they're doing they will bend their wrist and they'll make a fist and the kid smiles the parents weep and the nerds rejoice. That's sort of our formula so.

A

How how transformative is this just the ability to be able to do that, you.

B

Know these things are quite functional. I've got a video that I like to show of a kid using his hand, to throw a tennis ball, and then he uses his other arm to hit it. um The kids can ride bikes, they can pick up cups and they can drink from them and so on. But the really big and somewhat surprising benefit has been the psychological and social benefits of this. These hands increasingly are being given superhero color schemes and the kids totally get it.

B

You know every superhero has got a flaw which turns out that the basis of their superpower- and this is not a metaphor- this is the real deal here and the kids are often transformed from that shy. Awkward kid that other kids make fun of to being the coolest kid in the classroom, and these kids are in a position to start designing and we welcome and support that kind of contribution to start designing, better hands for themselves and for other kids, because almost.

A

Everything you're holding there, except for the screws in the string yeah, is printed. That's right.

B

That's right, a 3d printer that made this hand was actually built, not purchased but built by a volunteer and what it does is it lays down thin threads of melted, plastic back and forth back and forth back and forth layer by layer in order to produce an object that can then be in this case snap, together and and given to the superhero. So.

A

Give me an idea of the number of requests you get. What kind of all how many volunteers do you have it's.

B

It's not obvious how to answer that question. We have this week about fifty three hundred and fifty volunteers in our Google+ community. Now there are a lot of other people who aren't in the Google+ community and who, for example, download our freely shared design files and make prints, and then we only find out about it later. So we currently estimate that we've distributed about 800 hands that we know about probably an equal number that we don't know about.

B

We have 5300 known people who said I would like to help a fraction of them, but a substantial fraction I think have actually begun doing this kind of thing and our challenge by the way is how do we continue to support and mobilize and increase the efficacy of all of these volunteers? All of these recipients? We have hundreds in the cuse in an effective fashion, so.

A

How do you scale this, especially to places around the world where there might be greater rates of and deformity or abnormality? That's exactly.

B

What I want to know? We formed the enable Community Foundation about six months ago, we're now a not-for-profit organization, and we are approached on a weekly basis by refugee camps and international aid groups and development organization. Saying inexpensive, 3d printed prosthetics would be a boon. We just don't have them, and we say we are here to help, but we're trying to build up the organizational maturity to be able to partner with existing organizations. So we're now going about this in a backwards fashion, haven't created a global movement and already made a significant impact.

B

We are now building an organization that can negotiate relationships with collaborators and.

A

How many are looking for help and how many hands have you already handed out.

B

Eight hundred that we can name and count probably another 800 that we can't all right John show.

A

A co-founder of enable thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.