Director 25 and projects in 3D prosthetic help thousands of children with disabilities

3D printing has helped reduce the cost of prostheses for children to be affordable.

Prosthetic hand to help him up so much confidence

The initiative was launched by Andreas Bastian, 25, is currently the Technical Director of the Community Foundation E-Nable nonprofit Los Gatos (California), who is also researcher at Autodesk 3D printing technology. He served as head of research and development (R & D) at MakerBot. 2013 Bastian began to develop prosthetic E-Nable.

Although still very young, but Bastian took the initiative to help thousands of children have the opportunity to own cheap prosthetic

E-Nable designed the fake body parts in 3D for children over 3 years old and sharing their designs so they can be produced at a cost of about 30 dollars. Thus, the prosthesis can be replaced easily (and not too expensive) as they grow up. Currently, open source 3D design of E-Nable can be downloaded from Google Drive.

According to statistics, each year about 32,500 American children have to undergo surgery to remove the organ, and the Center for Control and Prevention of Disease estimates that about 1,500 children are born with deformities, "declining spending on ".

In May 5, Google has invested $ 600,000 for E-Nable to support research, development and manufacturing.

The prosthetic hand is made from non-toxic plastic 3D printing, waterproof and 5 screws - all priced from $ 8 to $ 15. They are attached to the muscles of the child actively through elastic straps.

3D printing technology has helped produce the prosthetic arm easily installed at low cost

Be aware, prosthetic versions (including hand and arm) Iron Man branded Limbitless Solutions developed by manufacturing costs around $ 300.

Cheap prosthetic has and will bring confidence to thousands of children

In this year alone E-Nable has shipped more than 270 prosthetic, while other companies use the design parameters to produce more than 2000 products, "Bastian said. His next planned is fabricated upper arms and shoulders. "It changed everything" - Robert Graboyes, specialist studies on health economics at George Mason University, said: "Only two or Children three years ago was not a potential audience, because they will quickly become taller, therefore, the cost of artificial limbs for children as it is too expensive. "