This was a presentation for the participants for the Core Relief workshop, October 3, on the island of Lesvos, Greece. It is intended as an introduction to the state of the art in 3d printing for a general public of professionals in the field of Humanitarian Aid. It contains tips, tricks and a lot of examples.

1. Additive Manufacturing in
Humanitarian Design
Gaspard Bos - New State of Matter
Lesvos, October 3, CORE RELIEF workshop

2. AM in humanitarian design
We went from Rapid Prototyping to Additive manufacturing (3d printing)
which is also Digital Manufacturing and can be part of Hybrid Manufacturing.
The point: the printer is part of a ‘set of tools’ empowered by computers.
Context to take into account:
Low-resource settings, subsistence marketplaces, marginalized societal groups,
(post-)conflict areas, (post-)disaster areas
What is humanitarian design?

3. AM is a collection of machines/techniques
Image source: 3D Hubs

4. AM has certain key markets
- Automotive and Aerospace
- Medical
- Jewelry and Costumes
- Hobbyists, prototyping
Typically low-volume,
high value,
application specific,
and large form freedom.

5. Apps for shape optimization
Image: 3D systems

6. Apps for customization

7. Scanning
Image:
Bevel

8. AM’s main disadvantages
- Post processing
(surface finishing parts, removing supports, heat treatments)
- Process reliability and quality
(how to guarantee that all machines produce the design the same each time)
- No cost advantage scaling up
(time per part stays the same)
But there are
developments!

9. Fast, high quality printing

10. Strong, durable, end products

11. Strong, durable, end products

12. Hybrid Manufacturing

13. Hybrid Manufacturing

14. Hybrid Manufacturing

15. Printing embedded electronics

16. Flexible materials

17. Multi material printing

18. Large scale 3d printing (plastic)

19. Large scale 3d printing (metal)

20. Using locally available/renewable resources

21. Functional things I’ve printed before (FDM)
Surfboard fin

22. Functional things I’ve printed before (FDM)
Headphone headband

23. Functional things I’ve printed before
Baby Stroller
brake system

24. Things I found and brought

25. Things I found and brought

26. Things I found and brought

27. Things I found and brought

28. Watch out for OVERdesign!
The clamp and brace have a lot of unnecessary design details and those make the
printing process more prone to failure.
A better design actually made for
3d printing:
https://www.waag.org/en/blog/parametric-3d-printed-finger-splint

29. The (FDM) printers can play different roles on
Lesvos
- Product development; prototyping, model making.
- Frugal innovation: hacking/appropriating, spare parts, testing modifications.
- Education. A tool for learning, creating teaching/presentation materials.
- (Hyper)Local manufacturing. Logistical, cost, quality advantage?
If basic items and large volumes, then mass production techniques.

30. Items identified
by FieldReady
that are candidates
to be 3d printed.