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ers at the organization.

In order to become a certied chapter of e-NABLE, the club must print hands and send them to reviewers at the organization. Once the reviewers verify their prototype’s quality, the club gets a badge for that speci c design and are then eligible to apply to the organization so they can make prosthetics for clients. e club’s goal is to acquire as many badges so they can help more people.

“I suspect we’ll get that certification next year and then we’ll be part of a network,” science teacher and advisor Dr. Humphrey Wong said. “ en we’ll nd a client, someone we can t the hand to, and we’ll learn how to do that and be a better chapter and hopefully get maybe two or three client requests through the year.” e idea to become a chap- ter was rst introduced by Wong’s in his CreAtive Technological Solutions class. In class, students were tasked with researching how one might be able to create an e-NABLE chapter, and from there, they continued to develop the idea. e club has printed four hands thus far. ree are Phoenix v2s which are a version of the basic 3-D printed hand, Phoenix. e only kinetic prototype was made by Siroka with his personal printer. A kinetic hand is powered by one’s body and is designed to be used by amputees. It has a fully functioning wrist and ngers that open and close. ese hands take Siroka 55 hours to print, one hour to assemble and only $6 to make. eir low cost increases the accessibil- ity of e-NABLE prosthetics. e rst step in creating a prosthetic hand is nding the design les for the desired type of hand. e prototype’s design SDF les are downloaded from the e-NABLE website and then sent to the 3-D printer. It is crucial that the correct hand is selected when printing because two similar looking hands can have drastically di erent characteristics.

“We bit o (...) more than we could chew for a semester course,” Jacques said.

Club members then assemble the printed pieces of a kinetic hand in the following process: each nger is connected to a distal part. en the wrist to the hand joint. Fishing line is tied through the distal and nger parts. Finally, the knots are adjusted to set the hand parallel to the wrist, allowing the hand to bend with high strength using minimal momentum. While this hand has been fully assembled, this kinetic prosthetic will never be used for a real person because of its fast manufacture. When a hand is made for a speci c client, the club must adjust the prosthetic towards their preferences.

“ e tension is to be adjusted in order for them to uniformly bend to a desired position,” Siroka said.

When customizing the prosthetic to serve a certain person, di erent types of Polyatomic Acid (PLA) are needed. Each part of the hand corresponds to speci c plastic ber such as PLA, Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) or ermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU).

Prosthetics materials vary based on their function. But, not every printer is suitable for all materials. e school’s printer materials were outdated. So, the club bought devices around $200-300 each, which classi es them as entry level printers.

Another di culty that comes with designing a hand for a speci c person is sizing. e group will need precise measurements of parts of the client’s body in order to make a prosthetic that ts, Siroka explained.

“ e main di culty was making the [3-D] printer [work]” Siroka said. “ ere are a lot of errors that can go wrong, especially with cheaper printers.”

But despite the challenges that come with building these prosthetics, Staples’ e-NABLE and its members are looking to help underserved communities in any way they can. So, if you go down into the dark and hot room of 1033, you’ll see life in the making.