Slashdot Mirror
Colorado Teen Designs Robotic Arm With 3D Printing
coolnumbr12 writes "A Colorado teenager has used 3D printing to create a robotic prosthetic arm that is fully functional and costs less than $500 to make. At TedxMileHigh in Denver, Colo., 17-year-old Easton LaChappelle demonstrated his robotic arm, and how he constructed the arm to keep costs low. 'So in the end, I built this robotic arm up to the shoulder which was extremely strong,' LaChapelle said. 'It could toss balls to you, it could shake your hand, it could pretty much do anything a human could if you program it correctly.'"
with all kinds of regulations and safety cases that have to be complied with... things they can cope with because they're so large, but little upstart companies can't afford to comply with...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
There's the problem, making something that looks like a prosthetic arm is the easy part. Programming it to make it work, as well as ensuring that it is durable enough for an arm is the remaining 90% of the work he has to do.
Most high costs are justified by "research costs", while patents are said to be meant to protect such investment from being invalidated by someone who copies the idea -- actually it avoids others from doing it independently and more efficiently.
But open source -- here applied to hardware -- is done by people out of joy or fun... since the work is its own reward, there are no high costs.
This is not against capitalism -- in fact, it's the very basic idea of doing what one knows best and benefitting others, while geting a just reward in exchange.
When did we allow corporations to take capitalism from us?
OT: Also, this port scanning sucks. Don't do that to your customers. I'm not here to troll. I rarely even post these days. If you're so intent on make ACs unwelcome, why not demanding commenters to register? Others unwisely do that, and they lose a lot because of that, but at least they don't annoy visitors...
Glad to see /. can find better articles on 3D printing.
hospital change master price $20,000 + other fees but if you are in market and have a plan it's only $1000 all in.
The question on every slashdotters mind.
Is that you?
I know exactly how this 17 year old is going to program this arm.
Let's just say, it'll only move up and down.
Every time I hear someone say that artists won't create without being paid. That's a lie. It's the publishers who want to be paid. Artists just want to create and not die of starvation but artists don't need to be paid -- they can get jobs too.
This guy is an artist. A brilliant artist, but an artist just the same. He doesn't just engineer things. He creates things.
My heart will sink when I see some giant company snatch this guy up and the things he makes get marked back up to that $80,000 mark again.
We see what's wrong with the world and "the system" (we say the system so we don't have to blame people directly right?) and we just go on without saying anything about it. I hope people start saying things. You don't have to do anything -- just say something. Say something to businesses out there. They might ignore you or me, but they won't ignore everyone -- they can't.
Change the world. Just say something.
give this boy a hand
Obligatory: Big Bang Theory
I was invited for the NASA 3d printing thing as well. Lets just say the recruiter guy wanted me to pretty much work for free doing grunt work.
No thanks, what a crappy job. I guess for a 17 year old its better than flipping burgers.
That's the real question.
If anyone watched the video, he talks about how want to control it wirelessly. Also shows the robotic arm, even on stage.
But he doesn't attempt to show how it moves or is controlled what would be what everybody is expecting to see.
As commenters on the IB Times page have pointed out, the embedded video restarts when the page auto-refreshes. This ruins the viewing experience. I recommend watching the video directly on youtube.
I'm so sick of the press' obsession with 3D printed guns. Almost as sick as I am of my fellow American's infantile obsession with things that go "bang!". Maybe fireworks should be legalized everywhere so that people can get their dose of "bang!" without having to resort to flinging bits of metal through the air at lethal velocities.
Did he design it with 3d printing or did he use 3d printing to create it?
make up your mind
STOP HIM! He didn't get medical approval from the FDA for even testing this!
JAIL NAO! Fines!
Those who want to mod me down, stop proving Ayn Rand's point. Not that anybody listens...or learn from sarcasm.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I would be pretty offended if my name was replaced with my age.
Rolling Stone put Tsarnaev on the cover after he took limbs away from people. Easton LaChappelle is working to give some sort of limbs back to people... I'd rather see him on the cover than Tsarnaev.
Bad headline.
you're new here aren't you?
Shouldn't he be doing something constructive like designing handguns or landmines? What good are artificial limbs without an easy means of creating amputees?
ala Mark Levin. Drive a stake through the heart of this Federal Monstrosity!
As an engineer I think this is a big step I have not seen before. With easy access to 3D cad and low price 3d printing hopefully the term design engineer will be a thing of the past. Normally this robot would have to be properly designed for injection molded and machined parts. With 3d printing all of those constraints go away. I would define my job as designing around the constraints of a particular manufacturing process. 3D printing has very little constraints and uses low energy. I think that is called empowerment even though that word is annoying.
Finally someone thought of something cool to print out on a 3D printer. I've been so bloody sick of hearing "I printed a gun with my 3D printer"