In 2013, we visited the University of the West of England (UWE) to attend Venturefest South West, a trade show for technology start-ups, entrepreneurs and inventors to showcase their innovations, encouraging business growth and collaboration. Armed with our manufacturing equipment and a few of our own creations, we built a stand hoping to expand the growing network of connections and collaborators we’ve built within the South-West technology hub. There, we met Joel Gibbard from Open Bionics.

Joel had a well developed idea and a venture that was already underway. He had pioneered a revolutionary, world first; a prototype of a prosthetic arm with a robotic hand that had been manufactured almost entirely using 3D printing and scanning. The product is completely unprecedented in terms of technology. The Open Hand project is largely financed via Indie Go-Go crowd-funding and uses open source information to allow for key collaboration and to ensure a reasonable cost when the finished product eventually goes to market.

We were so delighted by the prospect of assisting on a project of this nature, which not only uses new technology, but has a profound mission to make a difference, we awarded Joel with a £1000 voucher worth to use towards design consultation and PCB manufacture services with Cubik.

Shortly after, Joel arrived at Cubik HQ with stacks of electronic designs and layouts for the team to unpack and examine. After hours of planning and deliberating, two design reviews and several pots of coffee, we were ready to manufacture. Joel was impressed with the design and the resulting PCBs, saying:

‍“Without Cubik’s advice we would never have had a design anywhere near the quality it is. The experts at Cubik gave us a really clear idea of our electronic hardware options and their design consultation enabled us to create reliable and high quality PCBs.”‍

Everyone involved was delighted to play their part in the project. Cubik’s Giles Sanders said:

“Being involved in a project that is so ground breaking, with the potential to change the lives of hundreds of people was an honour and a privilege. Joel’s creation and design is inspiring.”‍

A few months later, Joel and the Open Hand project team were ready to carry out their first physical test which took place at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

Daniel Melville, 23 who was born without a right hand, was the first person to be fitted with the robotic hand prosthetic. Having seen Joel’s crowd funding campaign, Daniel was sold on the idea of robot prosthetics and contacted Joel. From an early age, Daniel he’d been attempting to park the less functional, cosmetic prosthetic and wished he’d had a “cool” robot hand. Daniel said:

“It would have been amazing when I was younger. I would have loved a 3D printed ‘Power Ranger’ hand - it would have made me feel a lot better about being different.”

Within twenty minutes, Daniel’s arm had been scanned with a 3D sensor to create a mesh. A 3D printer was then used to create the hand. The socket which took forty hours to print perfectly fitted first time.

Olly Mcbride, a Robotics student at UWE, who has been helping Joel with programming, said:

“The best part was seeing the excitement on Dan’s face as he went round trying to pick up everything he could. The whole process was heart warming.”

Joel and his team are delighted with the results but have vowed to create the ‘perfect solution’ aiming for the end product to be even more “light-weight, low-cost and creative” and available on the prosthetic market by the end of 2015. Open Bionics plan to stick to their original mission and open source all information on completion of their product, making it open to further developments.

Open Bionics went on to gain further success achieving the runners up position at the ‘Intel’s Make it Wearable’ competition and winning $200,000 to support further development of bionic hands. Joel and teammate, Sammy Payne visited California where they consulted with University of California, Berkeley and top Intel Business mentors. Giving his reaction to receiving the prize, Joel said:

“We believe this money will help revolutionise the prosthetics industry with the use of 3D scanning and 3D printing technology.”

We were honoured to be able to play a small but vital part in the process and continue to be inspired by the Open Bionics team who are focused and committed to their goal of delivering innovative, low cost technology as well as revolutionising the lives of amputees and differently abled people.

Speaking about Cubik, Joel said:

“Working with Cubik was invaluable to the initial successes we’ve had. They assisted us in creating our first run of electronics control boards for our robotic hand prototype.”

If you have a design in its early stages, an established idea or an existing project which needs mapping and is in either electronic design or production phases, please contact us to organise a telephone or face to face consultation. We specialise in helping inventors, entrepreneurs and organisations take their concept all the way to production and are always looking for exciting projects to work on.

For more information on Open Bionics and the development of their products please visit www.openbionics.com