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title: This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free | TIME
description: After watching a YouTube video about 3D printed prosthetics, RIT professor Jon Schull had an idea. He harnessed an online community of volunteers and problem solvers to work toward one goal - providing free, 3D printable prosthetics for kids.
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og:title: This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free
og:description: After watching a YouTube video about 3D printed prosthetics, RIT professor Jon Schull had an idea. He harnessed an online community of volunteers and problem solvers to work toward one goal - providing free, 3D printable prosthetics for kids.
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twitter:title: This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free
twitter:description: After watching a YouTube video about 3D printed prosthetics, RIT professor Jon Schull had an idea. He harnessed an online community of volunteers and problem solvers to work toward one goal - providing free, 3D printable prosthetics for kids.
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# This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Y1dNbpOV.m3u8" -->
## Video: This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free

[Watch (HLS stream): This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Y1dNbpOV.m3u8) (4:19)

![This Online Community Is 3D Printing Hands For Kids For Free](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Y1dNbpOV/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-08-31. After watching a YouTube video about 3D printed prosthetics, RIT professor Jon Schull had an idea. He harnessed an online community of volunteers and problem solvers to work toward one goal - providing free, 3D printable prosthetics for kids._


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:44 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[What Does 3D Printing Mean for the Future?](/video/wDkiUaVG/)

### What Does 3D Printing Mean for the Future?

[Fashion's 3D-Printed Future](/video/W2AgFCqJ/)

### Fashion's 3D-Printed Future

[Derby the dog: Running on 3D Printed Prosthetics](/video/D81GmXVm/)

### Derby the dog: Running on 3D Printed Prosthetics

---


## Transcript

[ NOISE ] We're entering an era in which energy is gonna be free and robots do all the heavy lifting. In that kind of a world, people are gonna have a lot of discretionary time and they're gonna be looking for meaningful lives. By God, there is nothing more meaningful than what we're doing. [ MUSIC ] I am John Shull. I am the founder of the enable community and I am the research scientist at R. I. T and the center for Magic. Enable is a global community of volunteers who are using 3D printing technologies and designing. Fabricating, distributing, 3D printed, hands and arm devices for children and giving them away for free.

[ MUSIC ] Two years ago, I saw a YouTube video in which a South African carpenter told the story of how in a shop accident, he cut the fingers off in one hand. [ MUSIC ] Discovering that Partial hand prostheses are incredibly expensive. He Googled his way around the world and he found Ivan Owen, a puppet maker in Washington state. Richard contacted me after seeing a video of one one of the mechanical prop hands, and offered me the opportunity to collaborate with him. They spent a full year working together, and they eventually came up with an inexpensive, 3D printable, body powered mechanical hand, and I had an idea.

Game of throw it? I made a Google Maps mashup. Up and I added to the YouTube video saying, if you have a 3D printer and you want to help put yourself on this map and if you know someone who needs a hand, put yourself on this map. As that video went viral, more and more pins showed up on that map, the result being that at this point we've done about 1, 500 devices. [ MUSIC ] This in 50 country's. The designs are getting better and better. The people are getting more and more enthusiastic. And is developing new valuable innovations, as fast as any research and development job at any corporation.

This is a 100 % [ UNKNOWN ] through slightly modified. I'm Skip Meetz, I'm a retired engineer. And I'm working as a full time volunteer For the [ UNKNOWN ] lamp here at RIT. This is a design that we've been working on for several years and it all came together just today. We rushed to get this one ready for Lucy. Hi, good to see you again. Lucy [ UNKNOWN ] [ UNKNOWN ] is the test pilot for the arms that we're developing. I knew you wouldn't go the whole month of July without coming up with some new ideas. And she and her folks have become real collaborators. This is [ INAUDIBLE ] Oh really? You know [ UNKNOWN ] in getting your Because they don't even pretend to look like regular human hands but instead look like super hero robotic hands, the kids love that.

Yeah, I'm pretty anxious to see, try putting it on. Oh, it's so nice. Our kids go from being that awkward kid with the weird hand who's often Teased by the other kids to being the coolest kid in the classroom, and that has huge impacts. [ UNKNOWN ] the same way as the other one? Whoops Yes, yes, that's looking good. [ UNKNOWN ] like this. I believe that we have proven that there are probably hundreds of thousands of digital humanitarians ready, willing, and able to land a metal forkel hand for the global good, and and we want to figure out what iceberg this is the emerging tip of, we were going to move out to other body parts and in the long run we my move towards by completely different technologies like Heads up Displays or Gene Printers It's wide open.

It's really great to find something like this, where I can work on the design of something that is really worth while. Making hands and arms for kids is It's hard to beat that. [ UNKNOWN ] in the heart So there you go There you go, you look beautiful, that's awesome Lou [ MUSIC ]

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