First a little about who Andiamo is and why we are doing this:
My wife Samiya and I founded Andiamo, we were the parents of Diamo who needed body supports known as orthotics. The process of getting his body support equipment was extremely painful, slow and in the end it didn’t even fit.
He had to be covered in plaster to make a mould, held still for an hour as it dried, finally the mould was sent away for production. This took months to come back by which time he had already outgrown it.
Right now this upsetting, old fashioned process happens to every child who needs a body support. That’s 100 million families worldwide and 7 million in the US alone. We wanted to make sure no other family would have to go through what they did. Our mission is to solve this problem globally, using new technology to bring hope to millions of families with disabled children.
Why 3D Printing?
We started at this point because it just seemed easier, that is often the entry point for most people into 3D printing. But whilst it is easy to get started with 3D printing, understanding where it really brings value is much harder when you’re going up against big incumbent businesses.
So what are the key advantages 3D printing brings to Andiamo and to the families we work with?
Accuracy
Whilst human’s can be extremely accurate the reality is that they can’t be accurate all the time and the margin for error between people can be huge.
When there are hundreds of people making things this translates to a margin of error of cm for a human. Whilst our margin of error with SLS is under a mm. For anyone that has ever had something that doesn’t fit quite right and how annoying that is then you can empathise that this makes a difference.
Now think of having to wear a rigid plastic back brace that doesn’t quite fit for 12-18 hours a day. That accuracy and specifically the accuracy of your comfort goes from a niggle to something that impacts your life. Even to the point that you dread wearing something.
Design
When we first started working with our clinicians their understanding of materials and design had been shaped by decades of hand making orthotics using thermoplastics.
Normally the re-education of a professional can take a really long time because it takes a long time to create proof of concepts for them to understand what is possible.
We’ve been able to not just create incredible designs that take advantage of lighter and stronger materials. But the speed at which we can design has proven invaluable to help clinicians understand what is possible and how quickly they can iterate.
However it also means we can change designs to take advantage of context. For example why have one item for every situation when you can create 5 different ones at the same cost? When you design something that has to do everything it rarely does any of them well.
Parallell Production
This is one of the biggest advantages of 3D printing that many people haven’t understood yet. Whilst it is dependent on the bed size there is an enormous advantage being able to print multiple items on a single bed. Remember in the orthotics industry it takes at least one person to make one thing one at a time.
3D printing? Well we’ve already printed 6 orthotics at the same time and that not only reduced time of production but hugely reduced cost. All these things together mean we can start creating cutting edge orthotics at a fraction of the cost. Even more importantly, Andiamo is building the tools to make the process of orthotic creation even easier. 3D printing doesn’t just democratise expertise it allows us to deliver expert services all over the world.
Kickstarter
We get letters every single day from families asking us to hurry up, which is why we’ve launched our new crowdfunding
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nrparvez/andiamo-adventures
To help spread the story we’ve made an awesome animated film inspired by ‘old skool’ platform video games. The campaign also features innovative 3D printable arts works as rewards for the backers.
3D Hubs
To highlight our mission to make design part of what we do we asked two artists to create unique rewards for all contributors. Which is why we’re partnering with 3D Hubs, so that you can print your reward at a place near you.
- Amalia Ulman will be creating an Andiamo inspired ‘Charm’ influenced by roadside jewellery popular in Mexico. This can be 3D printed out and worn as either a necklace or bracelet. Ulman’s piece will be offered as an ‘stl.’ printable file that you can print out wherever you are.
- International sculptor Lorenzo Quinn is giving backers the chance to own unique, 3D printed edition of one of his sought after works. ‘Horse’ is a standalone art piece taken from Quinn’s sculptural ‘Chess’ set.
Hope you’ll be a part of our campaign, either with contributing to the project or 3D printing on behalf of it!
