and in the next 10 minutes I'm hoping you will get it too.

(Laughter)

Forewarned is forearmed.

Our, our - Sorry. Our story -

Our story begins with what it's all about.

This is young Shea and as you can see,

she's missing the fingers on her right hand.

But at this moment she's teaming up with a member of e-NABLE

to try on this 3D printed prosthetic hand, given to her for free

and she likes it and she smiles.

And is this just the best thing ever or what?

Our story begins when this South African carpenter on the right

cut the fingers off of his hand in an accident.

Discovered that prosthetics are unbelievably expensive

and virtually unavailable if you've got a good hand but no fingers

and he teamed up with Ivan Owen, a prop maker

and puppeteer in the Pacific Northwest,

and together they designed a 3D printable prosthetic hand.

Richard Van As, the carpenter, made a YouTube video 1 year ago,

which I found, and in it he mentioned that he had discovered his invention

would also help the approximately 1 in 2,000 children

who are born missing fingers or hands or wrists.

That he was open sourcing the design and suddenly I perked up.

Because a year earlier I had been at a conference

of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance

and I went to not 1, but 2 talks,

in which engineering professors

reported that they'd taken a team of engineering students,

teamed them up with someone who needed a custom prosthetic

and together, by the end of the year,

the client had a new custom prosthetic and a changed life.

The students felt great, the professor gave them an A,

and after the second of these presentations I asked a question.

It occurred to me that if they had one person

who needed a custom prosthetic in their home town,

there were probably another 100,000 people around the world

who would benefit from the very same basic design.

Did they have any way of disseminating, distributing these,

making these available to other people?

Their answer was, "Well actually no.

The projects go into a filing cabinet, the students go and get jobs

and I start preparing my next course."

I immediately had a grandiose and complicated vision

for a multi-university consortium (Laughter)

that would collaboratively develop, disseminate these designs,

allow students to add to them,

and of course also make use of and emerging network,

that was anticipated of 3D printers.

But if you're familar with academia,

you know that getting even one university to agree with itself is impossible.

(Laughter)

And after a few months I gave up.

But when I saw this video 1 year ago, I did something simple.

I took 20 mintues, rather than preparing my own course, and I created a Google map

and I added a comment to the YouTube video saying,

"If you have a printer or need a hand, put yourself on this map."

Because as you know Youtube video comments are rarely inspirational.

But in this case - (Laughter)

I saw 2 comments saying, you know, "I got a printer. I would do this."

So I called their bluff and they called mine.

I had set up a simple map and I described it as

"a global, volunteer assistive technology network built on an infrastructure

of electronic communications, 3D printing, and good will."

And this I think may be a really important recipe.

Within 6 weeks, we had 70 people on the map,

and it actually began to work as fantasized.

Here's the story: people become aware of a 3D printed hand,

they go to a website called "Thingiverse", they download this thing,

and what they actually get is a 3D model which they can customize to fit

the needs of a particular individual.

They then use a 3D printer which is bascially a glue gun

on a mechanical arm that lays down really thin layer by layer of plastic

which immediately hardens to become these kinds of pieces.

The pieces are then assembled by hand

in a process that can take a number of hours,

although we are making the designs easier and easier.

And once assembled, these are then custom-fit to the client.

And the client can pick up a spoon.

The client gets to pick up a cup.

The client gets to be the coolest kid in the class,

having previously been, you know, that odd kid with the funny hand.

They love it.

So that was a year ago.

One of our members and I developed this Google Plus community,

which has been growing by about 10% a week since we started it.

We crossed the 1,000-member mark this week.

A high school student created a facebook page.

Another member now maintains the website which is our go-to place.

It's called E-NablingTheFuture.org and we seem to have unleashed

a virtual Cambrian explosion of innovative hand designs.

This is the original MakerBot Robohand,

but in fact it spawned the Cyborg Beast, which is what Shea has.

And then Peregrine Hawthorne, which is his real name,

is a 19-year-old who worked with his dad to produce this called the talon hand.

Which Peregrine, when he got his 2.0 talon hand,

discovered that he was crushing a soda can while sitting at the bus station.

(Laughter)

And they are recombining like hybrid species.

So we have a talon beast and in fact an Ody Hand,

which has three fingers for young Odysseus,

a 6-year-old in Greece whose hand was too small.

He needed something that would require less mechanical pressure,

and indeed the kids and the parents who are making these

are becoming part of the design process as well.

This is Luke Dennison.

We call him cool hand Luke, because his dad Greg -

because his dad Greg, who learned how to do 3D printing

from another dad in our community,

realized that he'd be better off with a thumb on each side of his hand.

It's not just the dads who are adding to the design.

This is Tully in North Carolina.

Tully was asked, "What color would you like your hand?"

He said, "Could it glow in the dark?" (Laughter)

That is a really good idea. (Laughter)

For that matter, 2 weeks ago I sat down with young Derek

whose arm ends around here and while I'm carefully explaining to him

what we're working on,

he took the demo model I had and another demo model that I had

and he put them together and said,

"I want mine to be this long." Also a good idea.

Why shouldn't he be the kid who can reach for the top of the shelf

where other kids can't?

The kids love the fact that they look like toys.

They give them superpowers, they love that part.

But they're not actually toys.

There was a piece on Fox News about a month ago

in which Jose Delgado demonstrated his really cool $42,000 prosthetic arm.

And he said: "Look I can press this button and my fingers will open,

and I can press this button and my fingers will close.

But I like yours better," he said,

and ours cost about $20 in materials and is given to him for free.

We now are taking E-Nable Tables to Maker fairs through ImagineRIT.

We're developing Hand-O-Matic software for public libraries

where you put your hand in front of the webcam, it takes some pictures,

gives you measurements and the model,

and if there's a 3D printer there, you get your hand.

And we are growing like crazy and this is the point

where you get to acquire the social disease as well.

What you see here, hot off the presses - as we used to say in the print business -

is the first active opening and closing prosthetic arm.

We actually use some elbow motion

and I actually got to do some engineering for the first time

because there's just a little bit of Cordage here

that causes it to pull open as well as pull close.

It's a little thin, but here's the big thing.

This had to be made in 3 parts

because our printer is not large enough for a grownup-sized arm.

There's a contest going on this week

for a 2 foot by 2 foot arm-sized 3D printer,

and if you look in the Flower City Twitter stream,

you'll find that there's a link where you can press a button to vote for us,

so that we will win a $6,000 2 foot by 2 foot Gigabot computer

and you too will have been inducted into the cult.

If that's not your game there's a lot more you can do.

We are trying to organize.

We have people who love 3D printers and don't particularly like people.

There are people who love people and don't understand 3D printers.

There are people who are organizing so that we can accept donations,

about which I will be happy to entertain any questions you may have.

We would like you to join us.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)