Additive Manufacturing in Humanitarian Design

Gaspard Bos - New State of MatterLesvos, October 3, CORE RELIEF workshop

AM in humanitarian designWe went from Rapid Prototyping to Additive manufacturing (3d printing)which is also Digital Manufacturing and can be part of Hybrid Manufacturing.

The point: the printer is part of a ‘set of tools’ empowered by computers.

Context to take into account:

Low-resource settings, subsistence marketplaces, marginalized societal groups, (post-)conflict areas, (post-)disaster areas

What is humanitarian design?

AM is a collection of machines/techniques

Image source: 3D Hubs

AM has certain key markets- Automotive and Aerospace- Medical- Jewelry and Costumes- Hobbyists, prototyping

Typically low-volume, high value, application specific, and large form freedom.

Apps for shape optimizationImage: 3D systems

Apps for customization

ScanningImage:Bevel

AM’s main disadvantages- Post processing

(surface finishing parts, removing supports, heat treatments)- Process reliability and quality

(how to guarantee that all machines produce the design the same each time)- No cost advantage scaling up

(time per part stays the same)

But there are developments!

Fast, high quality printing

Strong, durable, end products

Strong, durable, end products

Hybrid Manufacturing

Hybrid Manufacturing

Hybrid Manufacturing

Printing embedded electronics

Flexible materials

Multi material printing

Large scale 3d printing (plastic)

Large scale 3d printing (metal)

Using locally available/renewable resources

Functional things I’ve printed before (FDM)Surfboard fin

Functional things I’ve printed before (FDM)Headphone headband

Functional things I’ve printed beforeBaby Stroller

brake system

Things I found and brought

Things I found and brought

Things I found and brought

Things I found and brought

Watch out for OVERdesign!The clamp and brace have a lot of unnecessary design details and those make the printing process more prone to failure.

A better design actually made for3d printing:

https://www.waag.org/en/blog/parametric-3d-printed-finger-splint

The (FDM) printers can play different roles on Lesvos

- Product development; prototyping, model making.

- Frugal innovation: hacking/appropriating, spare parts, testing modifications.

- Education. A tool for learning, creating teaching/presentation materials.

- (Hyper)Local manufacturing. Logistical, cost, quality advantage?If basic items and large volumes, then mass production techniques.

Items identified

by FieldReady

that are candidates

to be 3d printed.