Exciting stuff going on at the James house last night. Four people, including a video crew, came over to interview our family. The reason was that we’re part of the e-NABLE family that has taken on the task of printing a hand for Tully ourselves. I picked up the downstairs (well, really just made one bigger pile of all the little piles), put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and folded the blankets that are usually strewn across the family room. Dad skipped rehearsal and he and mom brought the printer over and hung out with us. Then they each trickled in. We crowded around the kitchen table and we told our story. Turns out that we weren’t the story they were looking for.
e-NABLE is A Global Network Of Passionate Volunteers Using 3D Printing To Give The World A “Helping Hand.” We got involved with e-NABLE back when there were about 400 members in the Google+ community. Now there are over 5000 members. It is a group of amazing, inspirational, wonderful people to get to know. The reason we got involved is because my 10-yr old son Tully is missing his left arm below the elbow. A hand? Cool! Low cost 3D printed hand? Cooler! Glow in the dark hand? Coolest!!! Let me just say that our “e-NABLEr” Karyn totally understood what Tully would like. Lol!
To back up a little, Tully was born this way. The best advice we ever got was at Shriners when he was a baby - do not coddle this boy! They said we’d worry about how he’d do things with one hand and try to figure it out ourselves so that we could help him, but in the meantime, he will have already figured it out and have just done it. Truer words have never been spoken. Tully has no limits. We’ve put this kid into all kinds of sports. He is a boy. He needs to run around and play. So he happens to be missing a hand… who cares? In soccer, he usually wants to play goalie. We’re in the midst of registration for his third seasons on both our neighborhood swim team and the Cary Pop Warner football team. In a nutshell, he doesn’t NEED a hand.
Back to e-NABLE…
I asked Tully what he would do if he had two hands. We had just finished watching some snowboarding competitions. He said he really wanted to do these [crazy named don’t remember them] moves on a snowboard. Hmmm. What about tying your shoes? I can do that already. What about buttoning your pants? I can do that already. How about any other regular day to day things you can’t do? I’m good. I got the message that he doesn’t NEED a hand.
At the time we joined e-NABLE, the hand designs were only wrist actuated devices. Tully has a little bit of arm below his elbow that bends, but not a wrist. No problem. Let’s talk about it. It’s fun to be on the research side of stuff. Anything we can do to help? Turns out he couldn't care less that it be at the same distance down his arm as his hand, so let’s give this a whirl. Karyn printed out a cool glow in the dark hand, came over and we all put it together. Managing Tully’s expectations was pretty easy - I explained this is all experimental, we’re helping with design, and it may take several iterations if it even ends up working at all.
Well, it didn’t really work. Once it was all put together, it took way too much force to get the hand to close. Also, the velcro straps on his arm pinched a lot as he bent his elbow. We tried a bunch of tweaks, but figured out quickly this one wouldn’t work. That’s ok. That was still fun.
While we paused on the printing (we all have crazy awesome busy lives too), Karyn got a booth for e-NABLE at the NC Maker Faire. What an awesome event!!! Tully and I were totally in on manning the booth with her (well, me really and Tully along because he happens to be the kid without a hand). I love sharing our story and the coolness of this idea and the fabulous people of e-NABLE. Karyn really did all the hard work (setup, coordination, even making us t-shirts). We just showed up. That was mine and Tully’s first Maker Faire. Wow! Needless to say, Tully couldn’t have cared less about the hand stuff and spent almost the entire day occupying himself at the other booths around the Faire.
Then a new design came out. This time, Karyn printed out all the pieces, she and I met at Starbucks, and I took home a ziplock bag full of hand parts for T and I to put together ourselves. Independence is good! It’s how I’m raising my kids and I was all on board with that. It was fun! Basically, it was like playing with Legos. We gathered all the tools (files, string, pliers, and stuff) and set to work. This hand was looking big. Like man sized big. Hmmm. Well, we figured let’s keep going to see it finished. There are a lot of little holes to thread string through on these designs. Sometimes the printer doesn’t print them completely clear, so you have to file/break out a little of the plastic. No worries… until your tool breaks off in one of the holes. Oh. Let’s push it out from the other side. And then the tool broke off on the other side. Well darn. No worries. You didn’t need a thumb, Tully, right? Lol! He didn’t care. It was so big and clunky that strapping it on was kind of crazy too. He didn’t use it. Well, we had a fun mother/son bonding time putting it together (always looking for the good). :)
So we paused again. No worries. On with our regular programming.
Then Google donated a Makerbot printer and a huge box of filament to e-NABLE for us to start printing. What? That’s so incredibly awesome!! Tully - We’re going to print your hands ourselves and print them for others (at least that is what I thought at the time). There are so many hands in that box!!! So we pulled the printer out of the box, set it up, read a little about calibration and started printing. Turns out one of the main rods was displaced in shipping. I called Makerbot and they were totally awesome about supporting the cause too and shipped a part. I couldn’t figure out how to get this thing apart to put the new part in. I tried a bunch of things but still couldn’t figure it out.
At this point we were in the midst of swim team season, which led into football season and soccer season. If you have kids, that’s all I need to say. If not, let’s just say I had negative free time available. So it sat. And sat. And sat.
I talked to the technology teacher at school about sending it in there, but they were in the middle of losing/gaining principals, so the timing wasn’t good. Maybe in a few months.
I’m not sure why it took me so long (maybe because of all the sleep I missed during the negative time available), but I finally realized that my Dad was the PERFECT person to take this on. Doesn’t every retired, gadget loving, Life is Good shirt wearing grandpa need another project? Let me just say that within hours, Dad was printing. For the record, he really is the most awesome dad/grandpa. My parents have been in on this adventure with us from the start, so the whole idea was far from new. From the beginning, Dad has been talking about how this is cool, but not really a good design because [insert technical words here about automated and individual parts that I didn’t really understand but nodded anyway]. Well, that’s all good Dad, but this is what we have to work with today.
So Dad, would you mind downloading the new RIT arm from this site and printing it out for T? That’s as much as I can help. Cool? Awesome. Thanks so much. And then I went back to my regularly scheduled chaotic schedule. Dad on the other hand, dug in. He reached out to the designers, talked to the guy next to him at the town band practice, talked to others, printed stuff, downloaded new software, tweaked things, printed stuff, purchased some other software, printed stuff. In a nutshell, he put in the kind of time that I surely don’t have and really appreciate him doing.
So far, there are a few things I’ve learned:
- Parts take a long time to print. Like really long. There was one part that took 9 hours. Nine!
- Spools of filament are not always rolled on the spool nicely. When things are printing through the night and there is a little twist, the filament spool stops moving and therefore stops feeding the filament through. Serious pain in the rear.
- There are some technical limitations connecting your computer to the printer. Dad’s cool fancy computer in the kitchen can’t be hard wired to the printer.
- If you can’t hard wire the computer to the printer, you better hope you saved those memory cards from your old camera because the printer wants a max of 2GB. Like a really old camera.
- A 10-yr old does not have patience to watch something print that takes hours.
- A 10-yr old likes to print pumpkins and Batman batarangs. Hand smand. Whatevs.
- The open-source part of the process is the tip of the iceberg. Downloading files is easy. It’s the rest of it that has a cost in both time and money.
Apparently, all of this does not make an inspirational story worthy of an open-source company’s annual conference. They were looking for a family that downloads and 3D prints a hand together with a boy that cannot live without his open-sourced 3D hand. What they found was a family that loves open-source availability, online collaboration and development, teaching a kid about how the process works to design, test and iterate through the process again.
They met a family that thinks this whole idea of 3D printing is awesome and cannot wait to see where it leads (including the idea to make a steak knife attachment that was mentioned last night), but doesn’t think these hands or the RIT arm is the end all be all for this kid.
They met a family that loves to talk about all the things Tully can do with one hand.
They met a kid that thought he totally scored when the videographers wanted to play video games with him to see how he used the controllers with only an elbow and one hand. On a school night.
They met a kid that really doesn’t think a 3D printed hand is as big a deal as all of the adults think it is.
It was a little awkward when they realized we were not the story they were looking for. I hope I made it clear that it did not hurt our feelings at all that they decided not to film us or include us as part of their inspirational piece on open-source. This is our story.
I hope they left knowing the inspirational story of our family is that they met a boy that doesn’t NEED a hand. He is perfect how he was born.
