Exciting news from the e-NABLE community. After a recent visit to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore (photos below!), the e-NABLE community has been invited to hold a conference at Johns Hopkins on September 28th, dedicated to the open prosthetics movement.
We are pleased to announce the FIRST e-NABLE Conference!
Join us on September 28, 2014 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD!“e-NABLE’s collaborative approach to design and democratization of 3D-printed prostheses could significantly improve millions of lives worldwide. Now is the time to bring these technologies and practices into mainstream medicine.” – Dr. Albert Chi – Trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical, Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserve and world-renowned researcher on state-of-the-art prosthetics.
Back in July, Dr. Albert Chi invited four of e-NABLE’s core members to visit his lab at Johns Hopkins Hospital to teach him how to create our 3D printable prosthetic devices and learn more about what we are doing.
During our visit we were blown away by the advanced technology that he uses every day to train his patients how to control high tech robotic arms with their minds, eyes and muscles…and we were shocked and delighted when we watched him break out into an enormous smile and let out a giggle of joy as he picked up a $50 3D printed plastic hand and watched it move by just bending the wrist.
Dr. Chi not only works as a leading trauma surgeon, but he also has a heart for helping the people around the world that desperately need care. A few times a year Dr. Chi visits Haiti where he volunteers as a surgeon to repair damaged limbs from the devastating 2010 earthquake as well as those who require amputations due to infection and other traumas. He wanted to change the lives of thousands of people, worldwide, who could never in their wildest dreams afford a commercially made $30,000-$50,000 prosthetic and saw the potential for a mechanical hand that costs $50 to build – to make that dream possible.
But how do we get more medical professionals like Dr. Chi and prosthetists interested in 3D printing mechanical hand devices? How do we introduce them to the incredible crowd-sourced e-NABLE designs? How do we teach them how to make these hands so they can begin putting them on patients who could never afford a commercially-made prosthetic device?
- We have a conference to introduce prosthetists to the 3D printing world.
- We SHOW them our designs and introduce them to the global e-NABLE community.
- We walk them through how to assemble a device – step, by step.
- We invite children who are missing fingers and hands and their families to attend and teach them how to create their own devices as well as introduce them to prosthetists and the medical community – so they can see just how much these $50 hands can do.
- We introduce prosthetists to the collaborative innovation practices of e-NABLE, and we learn from them about ways we can increase options for them and their patients.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!