Soon: On-site 3-D printing of emergency tents

Born with a defective windpipe, Garrett Peterson has had difficulty breathing since birth — and has never left the hospital as a result. His doctors weren’t sure how long they could keep him alive. Last year, after reading about an experimental procedure that helped Kaiba Gionfriddo — a baby with similar breathing problems — Peterson’s father turned to pediatric ENT specialist Dr. Glenn Green and his colleague, biomedical engineer Scott Hollister, for help. Green and Hollister worked on Gionfriddo’s experimental procedure. Hollister, who runs the University of Michigan 3-D Lab, had been working on 3-D printing for biomaterials and tissue engineering for nearly two decades. For Peterson’s procedure, Hollister combined his software with Mimics — a medical image processing software from Materialise, a rapid prototyping and CAD software development firm based in Belgium — to create the splints. Peterson went through the life-saving surgery when he was only 16 months old. Green and pediatric cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Richard Ohye inserted the splints around Peterson’s windpipe to help him breathe better. The splints are designed to support his windpipe as it builds strength, before eventually dissolving in his body. The success of this second operation, which involved an emergency waiver from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, could pave the way for 3-D printing’s widespread use in international development, not just in global health but also in disaster situations. Responders to disaster situations need to be able to provide humanitarian and medical assistance quickly. But because there are often limited supplies and equipment on-site, they may not always be able to. The advent of 3-D printing, a technology that could literally shape solutions for international development, could address such challenges — from providing emergency shelters and adequate water supplies to performing life-saving surgical procedures. Open source lowers cost of decades-old technology The idea that one could print a life-saving device sounds like science fiction, but the process is actually fairly straightforward and has been around for decades: A 3-D printer uses rubber, plastic or metal to create an object, depositing layer upon layer of material until the design is transformed into the finished product. But mainstreaming 3-D printing did not gain traction until after the open-source RepRap — or self-replicating rapid prototypers — project was launched. The project was able to develop low-cost and open-source 3-D printers that could match the performance of commercial printers but at a significantly reduced cost. According to Joshua Pearce, associate professor of material science and engineering at Michigan Technology University, commercial printers are 20 times more expensive than the open-source versions. The low cost opens up entire fields, such as seriously thinking about using 3-D printing in development. --— Joshua Pearce, associate professor of material science and engineering at Michigan Technology University “More than 100 3-D printer companies latched onto the open-source technology, and we have seen an enormous explosion in both innovation and consumer choice,” Pearce told Devex. “The low cost opens up entire fields, such as seriously thinking about using 3-D printing in development.” 3-D printing reduces the steep learning curve associated with traditional manufacturing and enables one to skip straight to production — a huge time-saver in a disaster situation, for instance. “This would be a great promise of 3-D printing,” Hollister told Devex. “The key would be to adapt inexpensive, desktop models to print with biomaterials.” Thousands of free designs are available online for budding 3-D designers. Pearce himself developed a textile fastener that could create an emergency tent from any type of fabric, while a 3-D printable solar water purification cone, developed by University of Michigan student Matt Courchaine, aims to “provide a cheap and effective way to provide relief to those who do not have access to clean fresh water.” “You can print for far less than you can purchase them for,” Pearce said. “We all benefit from this kind of sharing.” Beyond cost considerations Making this repository of designs available to the public seems to be in line with technology justice. Technology justice, according to Practical Action — a nonprofit that leverages technology as an anti-poverty mechanism — assumes the tools to “feed the world and ensure everyone has access to the basic services required for a reasonable quality of life” already exist. Ensuring that people have access to these technologies is the real challenge. “The use of 3-D printers could contribute to a long-overdue shift of technology innovation and production to a local level,” Robert Cartridge, head of Practical Answers — the global knowledge sharing service under Practical Action — told Devex. But people must have a stake in the process if they are to benefit from these technologies. “We need, among other things, increased commitment to building the skills and capabilities of poor men and women to decide what technology they need and understand how to use it, and for innovation to be re-focused on technologies that help us all meet our basic human needs, rather than just satisfy consumer wants,” Cartridge said. That is a lofty vision and, given enough time, 3-D printing could very well advance that goal. But some hurdles remain for 3-D printing to be feasible. The main challenge, according to Pearce, lies in “hopelessly outdated” intellectual property laws that could impede the constant flow of designs and technologies that would make 3-D printing thrive. “The intellectual property battle is going to play out in our lifetime both on 3-D printable designs and the printers themselves,” he said. Indeed, 3-D printing represents a new frontier for the intellectual property industry. Gerard Magliocca, Samuel R. Rosen professor of law at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law, whose interest in 3-D printing began when he was looking to invest in stocks of 3-D printing companies, told Devex he realized this when he found that “nobody had written on [3-D printing’s] legal implications.” For now, 3-D printer engineers and designers are busying themselves with more practical matters. “There is a laundry list of limitations — speed, material properties, reliability, resolution — but the 3-D printing technical community made up of professionals and a formidable force of ‘makers’ is constantly knocking down technical barriers and driving the costs into the floor,” Pearce said. There is also a need to manage everyone’s expectations. “3-D printers are not nearly as fast as the Star Trek replicators on TV,” Pearce said. “Yes, you can make the fasteners for a tent, but can you wait an hour for a set to print in an emergency situation?” Join the Devex community and gain access to more in-depth analysis, breaking news and business advice — and a host of other services — on international development, humanitarian aid and global health.