MakerBot & RoboHand Make DIY 3D Bionic Prosthetics a Reality
Richard Van and Ivan Owen are on a mission to make DIY 3D Printed hands a reality with their Indiegogo project Robohand. The Robohand is a set of mechanical fingers that open and close to grasp things based on the motion of the wrist.
The crowdsourcing project recently received a boost of support from leading 3D printer company MakerBot 2, who donated 3D printers for the team to use for prototyping which collapsed the time to create the prototypes as well as drastically reduced the money required to create one.
According to their Indiegogo page: “The first hand was fitted to a 5 year old boy Liam who has come leaps and bounds with using his Robohand. This was done for free. Robohand has helped 4 children in total in South Africa with Robohands but we have run out of funding to continue to provide this device for free”.
Their Indiegogo campaign is raising funds that will supply the necessary materials, like Orthoplastic/Thermoplastic, hardware for putting the hands together (nuts, bolts, bungi cord), rolls of PLA plastic for the 3D printer to print the actual hands, plastidip for the fingers, anodizing materials (like sulphuric acid, desmutting liquid, colourant/dye and distilled water) the time and committment from Rich to create these hands.
What’s fantastic about this project is that Robohand is “Open Source” and the file is available for download from Thingiverse.com.
Visit their blog at www.robohand.blogspot.com for more information.
Peep the Bruce poster in the back
this is so badass
(Source: stillsovicious)
