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Walk Again Project's use of 3D printing
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Our 3D Printed World Cup
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Standing 10cm tall and ready to be painted
At the 1994 World Cup in USA the opening ceremony gained infamy as Diana Ross stepped up to take a penalty, as part of a carefully planned routine the ball was to burst the net wide open as she kicked it into the gaping goal, there was a problem they hadn’t accounted for; Diana Ross couldn’t kick a ball if her life depended on it, missing the goal was a thousand times more difficult than scoring was but good old Rossy somehow managed it.
The first kick was a missed penalty and in a nice symmetry so was the last as Baggio skied the final penalty to send Brazilians across the globe into delirium, ending a 24 year wait for World Cup number four. Those very Brazilians will witness something a tad more touching than a Motown supremo missing as the opening kick at this year’s World Cup as it kicks off this evening in São Paulo. The opening kick comes courtesy of some incredible cutting edge technology, with a 3D printing twist thrown in.
In stark contrast to the nation’s of the world competing against each other to prove who is the best the Walk Again Project is nation’s coming together to do their best to help a young Brazilian paraplegic not just walk again but to kick a football, the first football of the 2014 World Cup.
An international team made up of researchers from Germany, France, and the United States have designed a mind-controlled exoskeleton that transmits the brainwaves of their chosen one into movement.
Along with the lightweight hydraulic pumps and metals that make the exoskeleton move is a fitted cap that transmits the electronics signal from the brain to the computer, the cap has to be a perfect fit and where better to turn to for ultimate customisation than 3D printing?
The idea was first seen at Duke University, North Carolina as a team of Duke Engineers demonstrated that a monkey could control a robot with using the power of its mind. Duke University and their fellow worldwide scientists teamed up to create this exoskeleton but turned to Colorado State University’s Idea-2-Product 3D printing lab when they realised that they required padding that fitted both to the contours of the patient’s head and to the inside of the helmet.
Idea-2-Product lab printed many iterations of the soft flexible padding until they were happy that they had the correct amount of rigidity and flexibility. The 3D printing aspect of the Walk Again Project is only a small one but just as with Amanda Boxtel’s story it is a significant one, that improves comfort and saves on time.
Thingi Thursday: World Cup Special
In honour of this quite miraculous work and as an excuse to print off a trophy for the winner of the Personalize Palace World Cup sweepstake we decided to see if we could print off a World Cup Trophy, not the Jules Rimet Trophy but the Silvio Gazzaniga FIFA World Cup Trophy, which features two angel-like figurines lifting the globe on their backs.
Now I was pretty sure that I sure an good model of this on YouMagine a-la the Champion’s League one, but it appears, just as the Juke Rimet trophy before the 1966 one, that is has vanished - perhaps Pickles might find it? I took to Yeggi – the 3D printed model search engine to find an alternative.
Of course there were a few variations of the theme on Thingiverse but the majority didn’t contain the ridges of the continents like the real trophy. Eventually I found Mario de Bassegio’s model, which was a remix of oraltosun’s model of the figurines holding a textured earth that was designed by Ben Diedrich.
I particular like the extra element of the design and the collaboration that goes into these remix files, it is one of the elements of 3D modelling I feel like I could get involved in as opposed to starting from scratch. Mesh Mixing is becoming increasingly popular particularly with 3D scans.
This model is roughly 10cm high and was printed on a fast setting at a resolution of 0.20mm in just shy of 3 hours on the UP! Plus. It printed really well and with a good gold acrylic paint could look quite the doozy.
