Dec 6, 2014 | By Alec
Anyone who's ever been in a Scout troop themselves, will know that doing volunteer work is a large part of scout life. Typically, they're active in cleaning neighbourhoods, taking care of animals or entertaining the elderly, but a number of scout troops from the Baltimore, Maryland area have taken up a whole new cause: 3D printed prosthetic assembly, in collaboration with E-Nable.
For those of you who've never heard of E-nable, it's perhaps the most noble and inspiring movement in the world's 3D printing community. It consist of a worldwide network of some 1600 volunteers (and their numbers continue to grow!) that design, print and customize 3D printed prosthetics for children and other needy people everywhere. They bring children and adults with missing limbs into contact with 3D printing enthusiasts who want to use their creativity and machinery to help others.
For thousands of people throughout the world, this has resulted in wonderful, functional, original and low-cost prosthetics that have been customized to suit them perfectly. Especially disabled children are benefiting from this, who are given original prosthetics that function as toys as well. Have you seen their cool 3D printed superhero prosthetic? They're giving disabled children something that actually makes other children jealous.
They have a series of basic prosthetic kits available through their website, but printing and assembling these can be a time-consuming (though educational) activity. Fortunately, the Baltimore scout troops will help them during three 'hand-a-thon' sessions, that will not only result in a large number of assembled hands for children and refugees, but will hopefully also educate children about 3D printing and prosthetics.
Scouts are working with Johns Hopkins trauma surgeon Albert Chi, MD learning to 3D print and assemble hands and arms as a generic inventory for Ziv Medical Center. Ziv is located near the Syrian border in northern Israel, and cares for its regular caseload and surges of Syrian refugees.
Two of these sessions have already been held, and a third is planned for December 13th. These events are the initiative of Maria Esquela and her daughter Sarah, who attended an E-nable event in September and were inspired to organise a scout event with the help of Dr. Chi.
After their first event in early November, Maria wrote:
"We had our first assembly workshop yesterday. The scouts were helpful managing it but it cannot be said that they ran it. We worked on 19 hands. It was held at the Baltimore Robotics Center and attended by American Heritage Girls, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts and Venture Scouts. There were non-scouters from the community as well as from the maker community, interfaith/faith-based organizations (National Association of Muslim Americans on Scouting, Archeparchy of Pittsburgh Greek Byzantine Committee on Scouting and Archdiocese of Baltimore Catholic Committee on Scouting), and people Sarah and I met at the TedX talks in Baltimore the day before. The focus was working on the assembly process and mixing ages/generations in the builds. Good family response. Good promotion of STEM. Reached a lot of girls."
While an absolutely selfless initiative, one scout leader was inspired by the event to help one the 12 year-old Christian, a local scout. Christian had been outfitted with a $40,000 Myo-electric arm that was absolutely pointless, but E-nable has since helped him to build an entirely new, far less expensive and far more functional 3D printed prosthetic.
These wonderful events capture everything that is important about 3D printing; they're open-source, educational, and are selflessly helping others through clever and affordable designs. And if you're inspired and have a 3D printer at home, you can actually help them out! As these events rely on a 3D printed parts, it will be very helpful if you transform some left-over filament into prosthetic components.
There's another event planned for December 13th, and any hand kit shipped to them before that date can be used to instruct children and improve someone's life. Any kits that are not assembled at this event will not go to waste, as they will be handed over to medical staff to be assembled when a patient needs it.
Interested? Download the printable STL files for their raptor kit from their website, which can be printed at 115% 125%, 130%, 135%, 140% and 145% sizes in all different colors. The 3D printed components (so unassembled!) can be stored in ziplock bags, along with a label detailing their size and whether it concerns a left or right hand.
These kits can then be shipped to the following address:
Patronage Church
ATTN: Fr. Conan / Scouts e-NABLE
1260 Stevens Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21277
Posted in 3D Printing Events
Maybe you also like:
- Cults' Top 18 3D printable toy models for Christmas
- British anti-cyberbullying campaign relies on 3D printed advertisement
- Swedish architecture firm plans to build SwimCity, 3D printed housing on the Water
- Luna modular Bicycle is 3D printed on demand, no stock required
- Build a light-up 3D printed Stargate that actually dials
- Stratasys introduces free 3D Printing Curriculum to help prepare students for future careers
- 3D Systems & Formslabs settle SLA patent lawsuit, with Formlabs to pay 8% royalties
- New Emendo software automatically repairs errors in STL 3D printing files
3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.
