3D4D Challenge

Speaker 1
What would happen if we took 3D printing and we applied it to the developing world? A world where internet-based retail is still in its infancy, but connectivity is growing. But a world where the traditional supply chain, logistics and delivery, can take weeks, even months. How could 3D printing impact on the developing world? If it could be used to support local manufacture, maybe for agriculture, education, healthcare, fair trade, or simply just to provide access to some basic consumer goods and hardware. The 3D for Development Challenge has been established to test this concept, to allow charities and social enterprises and NGOs the opportunity to learn firsthand about the unique capabilities of 3D printing.

Speaker 2
I use 3D printing to build a robotic greenhouse, a small robotic greenhouse that uses a combination of 3D printed parts and locally sourced material. Most of the developing world has GSM networks everywhere, and so so it can tell you by phone what it’s doing, what its temperature’s been, how much it’s watered, and so forth. You can go about your regular daily life and your job and so forth and put a minimal amount of investment time-wise and energy-wise into your food growth.

Speaker 3
The problem that we’re trying to solve with 3D printing is the distribution of affordable solar, clean, renewable energy for rural households in Southern India. There’s obviously a lot of solar products in India already. Still a very small percentage of people have access to it. We found that there was the three main problems: affordability, replacement parts, and the fact that the quality of the products weren’t what they should have been. And those are the things we’re trying to address.

Speaker 4
The jigger is a small creature, a small parasite, which feeds on warm-blooded hosts, flesh and blood. There have been 265 infestation-related deaths since 2009. There’s a A total of 2. 6 million registered infestation so far, 1. 5 million being school children. Why 3D printing makes everything so cool is because the girls who are affected by jiggers have deformed feet, so they Their feet can’t fit into any common shoe. If it does, they’re in excruciating pain. We want to provide a way for them to have shoes which are comfortable and have it available cheaply.

Speaker 5
They The project solves the lack of access to soft tissue prosthetics, so replacement noses and ears for people in the developing country. The project we’ve developed actually allows the production of prosthesis, so replacement noses and ears for people using completely digital processes. We were able to actually capture an individual patient digitally. Then we designed them a prosthesis, digitally, and then we directly 3D print a range of processes. We can actually produce up to 20 or 30 processes at any one time. Whereas existing processes, you’re only producing one at a time, and it’s very expensive.

Speaker 6
In Bolivia, the small country in South America, a population of 10 million people. About half the country has almost no access to electricity whatsoever. They’re also a landlock country. The only real connexion they have with the through the Internet. It’s essentially cut off from the trade routes of the world economy. We did a competition where we offered a small prize for people to come up with a design for an LED light bottle. Basically, in a lot of small homes in Bolivia, they don’t really have a lot of access to light. They don’t have any money for expensive light bulbs. You also need some hookup to the electricity grid or something like a solar panel. What we were thinking was, Why don’t we sell them these small solar panels that are attached to basically a Coke bottle, put into the actual hole in the roof. During the day, light goes in through the bottle and there’s water in it, so it diffuses the light very nicely. During the night, these LEDs inside of it light up the whole bottle. They’ve been storing electricity off these solar panels on little batteries, and then it basically powers the whole thing for the entire night.

Speaker 7
So waste management in India currently consists of a group of people called waste pickers, and their job is to go through tonnes and tonnes of garbage every day and separate plastic from the organic waste. And they live in impoverished conditions and get paid pittance for the work that they do, which is very important work. The market for 3D printing in developing countries like India is vastly expanding, and we find that a lot of people, like students, professionals, and even industry, is very interested in using 3D printed products. However, currently, quality 3D printer filmment isn’t actually available in India, and it’s actually imported from overseas. Our idea is to use the waste picker, the waste picker angle that I spoke of earlier, use the plastic plates that they produce, take those plastic plates, convert them to 3D printer filmment, and then use that low-cost 3D printer filmment in our own 3D printer machines. We’re going to set up kiosks all over. Our initial idea is to work in Pune, which is an Indian city, and so we’re setting up kiosks all over Pune to use that low-cost 3D printer filmment and provide low-cost 3D printer services to students and professionals.

Speaker 8
Every year, the world produces about 250 billion kilogrammes of plastic, and only about 10% of that is recycled. We’re working to try and recycle more of that plastic by employing 3D printing technology. We’re also going to be recycling the plastic into items that address water and sanitation issues, namely composting latrines and rainwater catchment system parts. For most recycling, it requires pretty heavy-duty industry to reduce waste plastic and then produce usable products from that. The exciting thing about 3D printing is that a 3D printer is like a whole factory just in one machine. So after we’ve used our shredding machine and our filament extruder to get the plastic ready, we can recycle that plastic into almost any printable object.