In honor of the upcoming Maker Faire Bay Area, I’d like to revisit the great e-Nable community, which comes together to provide 3D printed prosthetics for hand and finger amputees. The e-Nable community includes many things; a collection of open source hand and finger designs accompanied by an international team of volunteers which include engineers, teachers, 3D printers, designers and of course receivers. Once someone in need of hand reaches out to the community, they can find someone nearby with a 3D printer and assistance for fit and assembly. There is constant growth with the core of providing affordable prosthetics; there are events, forums, and the designs are constantly being discussed and modified on its Google+ community.
When e-Nable first started, it was with a handful of people and designs. There are now more than 5000 volunteers, and the open source design categories have now grown to 9 on the website including hand, wrist, and partial hand prosthesis, with numerous variations of each. I’d like to spotlight the ‘Raptor Hand,’ a great complete hand prosthetic design which was made in mind for ease of fabrication.
Once the Raptor design is selected as the design of choice, it is accompanied by the Handomatic web application which allows a user to input hand measurements to create custom files for 3D printing the final product. The e-Nable site provides users with a list of materials needed and links for where to get them, as well as a diagram of parts, instructions for printing, and the great instructional video below:
The site also provides a helpful diagram of how all the parts fit together:
roboticsfinder 
