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Amin Hasani’s Blue Heart Hero Makes Custom 3D Printed Assistive Devices for Amputees

Amin Hasani is the designer behind the Havenlabs utility band. Havenlabs is a nonprofit that aims to use 3D printing to aid veterans. Designer Amin now wants to take a broader approach and use his skill to aid amputees of all kinds through a commercial company Blue Heart Hero. With Blue Heart Heroes he hopes to work with the amputees themselves to develop the perfect prosthetic and assistive devices for them, their lives and their pastimes.
3D printing excels in creating specific solutions for specific problems at low cost. If you need a unique geometry, texture or functionality quickly then 3D printing is an almost unbeatable technology. Especially in polymers, we can see that in a day one can print an assistive device for a few dollars. Assistive devices need to be tough, reliable and dimensionally accurate. Creating these kinds of parts is well within the performance envelope of quotidian materials such as PLA and the everyday desktop printers that you have at home. Even a relatively simple device, tweaked well could make something like this.
The medical world has through barriers to entry and institutionalization managed to insulate itself from design and new innovative solutions. Partially this is very understandable and good we want a heavy regulatory touch and focus on safety on those products that are used in a medical context. However, this means that we get safe but one size fits all kinds of boring “medi-gray” solutions. For people who have a unique medical challenge the established system often can not provide for them. This is why 3D printing has taken such flight in assistive devices. This area often creates unique problems that require one-off solutions such as a CMU making a unique device for a Cello player or this Russian amputee who required a device to assist his freediving record attempts. Other examples include a wireless switch, an adaptable button, and a wheelchair joystick, all by assistive collective Pôle-Ergo. We even made an article on top ten 3D printed assistive devices for the disabled. In future many more medical cases and unique problems will find 3D printed solutions. Especially interesting will be the development of braces, splints, postoperative braces and to see how this percolates from richer countries to mid-tier and developing ones.

Amin Hasani now wants to make open source assistive designs for those who need them. His first customers include “a world traveler and photographer. He is publishing a book, with photos of the difficulties that amputees have around the globe. I am designing him some 3D printable attachments for his camera” Amin tells us. He aims to make custom solutions for peoples singular problems but at the same time share these designs so that many more could benefit for them. In this way, his commercial business will have positive externalities.
He mentions to 3DPrint.com that, “We don’t accept donations, we only accept funding for projects”,  “this way designers are funded to achieve better results.” What’s more, he hopes to inspire teachers to let their students take money in order to fulfill design requests. We often see things like assistive devices as either charity, something for the government to do or the realm of large faceless medical companies. By engaging the profit motive and making learning very hands-on Amin is doing something different. Ideally, amputees will become very discerning and demanding because they have to pay while students will excel because they are doing something worthwhile that pays. It may seem that a charitable solution to the same problem could be cuddlier. For some, it may also feel wrong to charge for this. At the same time, there are a lot of charities that are self-supporting bureaucracies that are inefficient and excel only in putting out ads that make us feel bad.

Why do you do this?

My mission is to identify most needed subjects and share it with colleges and have them fund their students to solve those problems. Allowing amputees to purchase designs online was a great decision because they want to be treated normally as opposed to receiving prosthetics for free as charity.

Some amputees don’t know for example they can play guitar… if they request on the website, some engineer can design them the right attachment! We’re giving amputees a chance to do anything they thought they could not do! I believe I can affect many lives world wide by giving them the opportunities they haven’t had.

What progress have you made?

So far I have designed an attachment that can apply to any kind of partial arm single amputee. This attachment is open-source, meaning that any engineer or designer can design a new attachment and upload on the website to share. I am currently working on another 3D printable assistive device that is designed for double amputees with both partial arms. To allow them to put on different attachments without another’s help. It is a very basic mechanical snapping feature. Right now I am mostly trying to invite more engineers and designers to the community and link with organizations who support amputees.

What’s holding you back?

I am a full-time H1B employee, I cannot quit my job to fully focus on this. And I haven’t discussed fund raising with any venture capital. My focus is to gather more designs and contact communities who are support amputees, to collect more requests from amputees.

What printers and material do you use?

I have a Creality Cr-10, I mostly use PLA. I am trying to save some money to buy SLA printer and print standard resin, rough, durable and flexible. I have 3 3D printers at work, I am the head designer of a company in Long Island. After I introduced 3D printing to this company, we slashed our prices by 30% and saved thousands of dollars in prototyping our new products.

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Customizable 3D Printed Contactors Give Disabled People Access to Technology

3D printing has become an invaluable way of helping people with disabilities. It’s an inexpensive method of creating assistive devices that can be easily personalized to the user, and many people, from professional occupational therapists to everyday makers, have taken advantage of the technology to create inventive devices to help those in need. Pôle-Ergo is a group of French occupational therapists dedicated to improving the lives of disabled people through assistive devices and other alterations to daily life, and in the past has taken advantage of 3D printing to create some of those devices: a wheelchair joystick, for example, and a universal wireless switch.

Now Pôle-Ergo has taken on a new project: an adaptable switch or contactor, which is a button commonly used for people with disabilities to access electronics. The button transforms motor gestures without precision into signals that can be interpreted into signals used by computers, tablets, mobile phones or other devices. These contactors are frequently used in the occupational therapy field, but according to Pôle-Ergo they can be difficult to use when they aren’t designed to meet the specific needs of the individual user.

Thus, Pôle-Ergo created a 3D printable contactor that can be modified according to the user’s motor characteristics, habits or tastes. The various parts of the contactor assemble like Legos, with a series of options that allow it to respond to any potential situation.

“As an occupational therapist, I regularly use commercial switchs, however, if they are suitable most of the time, I have sometimes difficulty finding the right one hence the idea of being able to personalize them according to the particularities of the people concerned,” Guy Ehretsmann of Pôle-Ergo told 3DPrint.com.

The project offers several options, all available on Thingiverse. There is an ergonomic edge and multiple options for ergonomic buttons, as well as a GoPro mount. Users can easily try out different designs before deciding on one that is right for them. Some inexpensive hardware is required: an internal button and mini jack cable will cost about $2.00, while the GoPro supports could run anywhere between $10 and $30.

Assistive devices like these are remarkably easy to make, and innovative makers and designers are coming up with new options every day. Competitions have even been launched for the purpose of sourcing new ideas for assistive devices, both basic and advanced. The ideas that people come up with for these competitions are truly remarkable, and could really change lives if they were implemented. Outside of these competitions, however, there are still plenty of people who are coming up with designs on their own, like Pôle-Ergo.

The 3D printable contactor they came up with isn’t fancy or flashy, but it could give disabled people access to all sorts of technology. For those without disabilities, it is difficult to imagine the frustration of struggling to do something that others do easily without a thought, and especially the frustration of struggling with assistive devices that are meant to help but aren’t customized to one’s specific needs. Pôle-Ergo’s project allows people to have access to technology in a personalized way, to create something that fits their needs and optimizes their comfort.

You can learn how to assemble the contractor below:

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

[Images: Thingiverse]