Highlighting one social justice application of 3-D printing, Brandeis Prosthesis Club invited fellow University students to assemble 3-D printed prosthetic hands on Friday. 

The event, part of the University’s social justice festival ’DEIS Impact, gave students a chance to assemble older models of the prosthetic hands, which the club now donates to disabled children. Before helping the audience put together hands themselves, club co-President Alison Tassone ’18 and Vice President David Bressler ’20 introduced BPC and explained its mission.

“We 3-D print prosthetic hands and then give them to kids that don’t have them,” Bressler said.

So far, the club has sent prosthetic hands to children in Ghana and the U.S. Tassone and Bressler told the story of the club creating an “Iron Man” hand for a little boy named Andrew. The hand was colored like the superhero, per the boy’s request, giving him a chance to be “the cool kid with the superhero arm,” Tassone said.

In addition to entire hands, BPC has also created individual prosthetic fingers, called Knick fingers. In the coming semester, they want to make their first Hackberry hand, which responds to nerve signals.

BPC’s creation and innovation is made possible by its partnership with e-Nable, an international organization that connects people willing to 3-D print and assemble hands with those who need them across the world. The organization grew out of an unintentional invention, according to Tassone. In 2011, e-Nable founder Ivan Owen created a mechanical hand as a costume piece and posted it online. The hand caught the attention of a man in South Africa, who reached out asking if it could replace his lost fingers. Their resulting collaboration inspired a mother in South Africa to request a hand for her son.

Owens then combined 3-D printing technology with a mechanical whalebone hand from the 19th century, posted the 3-D model online, and invited others to print and assemble hands for those who need them. The community grew, and within two years, e-Nable had “7,000 members, 2,000 devices and 45 countries involved,” Tassone said.

“There are a bunch of strangers making hands for kids they never really get to meet,” Tassone said of the e-Nable community.

3-D printing prosthetics has multiple advantages. Bressler explained that prosthetics are usually extremely expensive, with functioning arms costing “upwards of $10,000; ... some even cost 30,000.”

The hands that BPC creates cost about $23 in total, according to Bressler — $3 for the printing materials, and $20 for a kit that contains the other necessary equipment for each hand, like string and screws. Brandeis donates the hands to e-Nable for free.

The significantly lower cost of 3-D-printed hands is especially important for kids, Bressler explained. “Children will outgrow them quickly,” he said, “so we can make another one fairly easily and cost-efficiently.”

Beyond the club’s partnership with e-Nable, the event gave the audience a glimpse into the world of 3-D printing, and how to get involved in it at Brandeis. 

The process of 3-D printing starts with a computer-generated model. You then “put [the model] into a software which will put it into layers, and then you put it into the 3-D printer,” Bressler said. 

“Some printers … have renewable bioplastic spooled in the back of the device, almost like a string,” explained a 2014 Mashable video played at the event. “When the printer receives the data, it pulls the material through a tube, melts it, deposits it to the plate, where it instantly cools.” These layers build up to create the printed item in a process the video called “additive manufacturing.”

At Brandeis, BPC recycles “all of the material that we print in. So if anything fails or if there is support material, we can turn that into new filament,” Bressler said.

According to Bressler, the library has about 70 3-D printers, and all students, faculty and staff can print for free at the MakerLab. BPC meets Wednesday nights in the lab, from 8 to 9 p.m.