 All right, we are back at Portland Maker Faire. I'm Dr. Kiki for This Week in Science, and I'm sitting here with Miguel, who's part of representing 3D printing here. You are representing 3D printing here at the Maker Faire. So tell me a little bit about what you do and what you've brought to the festival. So we are a 3D printing meetup group. We've brought, I haven't counted yet. We have brought so many printers, so many people who both designed printers, used printers, and done things professionally with them. So we have a big old booth that's scanning people. You're scanning people? Yes, we're scanning people. You're scanning people. How are you scanning people? Like is this kind of like TSA? No, no, no. What are you doing? It's scanning the matrix by having a iPad with a structure sensor on it. So people are walking around the person to be able to be scanned. Huh, yeah. So just a single iPad, just walking around, and that iPad is figuring out, based because of the camera in the iPad, it's able to figure out. It has a structure sensor on it, and that's a special camera. Oh, it's special. Yeah, so it's a special camera that has, I think two cameras in that... Triangulate in a way. Gets the mesh from the surface you're scanning, and then the app on the iPad stitches that together into one big old person. Wow, and so people are basically able to scan themselves and then print little figurines of themselves? Yeah, we're even actually printing them here at the event. How long does that take? It depends on how busy we get. So it's been maybe an hour or two, so it's instant in terms of cameras. Right. So the old photo developers instant developing. That's still amazing to me that you could actually consider doing that. I mean, I remember the days when I filmed cameras with a little Kodak clicking shoot, little film camera, take it into the film developer, and it was either, at first it was like, oh, come back in a couple of days kind of thing. And then it turned into one hour film developing. And now it's not film developing, it's one hour, print yourself a little figurine of yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is amazing. Okay, so you've brought body scanners. What else do you have here? We have giant Pikachu. My son is gonna love that. Oh my God. He couldn't get his printer working for the event today, but he has a one meter cube build area for his printer. So he can make Pikachu's like yay big. That's amazing, giant Pikachu's. I think the biggest thing we've brought to the event is the diversity of the 3D printing industry. So we have machines that were designed by people here or designed by somebody across the country and then built there and then shipped across the US. And then some of them are kits that you buy. And so there's probably quite a price range also going from like a couple hundred dollars to maybe over like a few thousand. What's the most expensive 3D printer? Well, the meter cube one evidently was like really expensive. I don't know how much it was, but that was I think the most expensive printer that kind of a group mainly works with. But then some of us have a professional experience with the multi hundred thousand dollar 3D printers. And those are from the big companies that get shipped on semi trucks. Wow. And so for yourself, I mean, you're here in a casual personal sense and this is like a meetup group that you have, you all work together, but this is more than just a hobby for you. Definitely, yeah. I started, I got an internship and then from that internship, I got introduced to the meetup group here actually three years ago. And from that is like, oh, I like 3D printing too. And I had some experience like building one for one of my previous jobs. And then from that kind of like, oh, I can build one myself too. My friend had designed one and like, oh, I'll build that too. And then having that interest kind of gotten me more ingrained into this group and it's kind of cool like being able to show like, oh, I have this awesome print every meetup and just talking about 3D printing in general. Pretty cool. Yeah, has it really helped having other people to bounce ideas off of? And I mean, in terms of things that you've learned and has it advanced your understanding of how to use or apply 3D printing? Definitely. One of the people here use a program called Fusion 360 and that program has really gotten me to be able to bring my ideas in a much easier way. I wouldn't have known about that otherwise. Right. Yeah, I think that's one of the best things of groups is that the cross-pollination of ideas and ways to do things differently. Something else that you have here that is really interesting, I know there's a workshop down the hall and it's for adopt a hand. Adopt a hand. What is this? So every year we've been trying to do a workshop called Adopt a Hand where a couple weeks before the event here, we get a bunch of people together to 3D print the prosthetic hands and they have like a range of sizes. So the idea behind Adopt a Hand is that the hand itself is doesn't cost too much. It's all with normal materials that you can find at the hardware store and then you 3D print a lot of the parts. So as a kid grows up, they can move on very easily to a newer, larger hand as they grow instead of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars every time they grow, which is for kids. They're growing constantly. I have a five-year-old. I see the growth spurts constantly. I'm like, really, you need a new pair of pants already? I mean, and if a child needs a prosthetic hand, it's like, really, you need a new hand already? Yeah, yeah. And as a parent, that's gotta be something really, like all of a sudden you're struggling and so how are you reaching out to people so that they, to make it available to kids? Like how are you getting the word out? We've been working with another organization that actually their name escapes me right now, but they have a nice website and they coordinate all these hands. So our workshop right now is actually building those hands. Wow. And everyone's building it together. Yeah, so how hard is it? I mean, you have a plan for a hand, probably the 3D design, right? And then you print it, but is there stuff you have to actually assemble and what's the quality of the hand? How does it last over time with a kid using it? It does last, the plastic, it's just like the same plastic you get from like a water bottle. So it doesn't break, it usually kind of bends a little bit. So of course, if you bend the fingers back all the way, it's gonna break. Yeah, so will anybody's hand? You know what, it'll bend your fingers all the way back. So it's gonna break maybe, but if the kid's gentle with it, then it's not going to break and the cost of entry is so low that so what if it breaks, you can get another one. You can get another one. And what's the usability of the hands? A lot of the designs that we make is the hand specifically. So with people who don't have maybe all their fingers, they can bend their wrist to kind of grip onto things. That's the main one we work with and the design for that is the Raptor Reloaded. And it's a really cool design. It uses, it actually uses a weed-whacker, it's just a cool string. Because it's a very inexpensive way of getting that tension force and it lasts too. It's a very slippery plastic and it won't degrade as much as other plastics. Yeah. This is really cool. So where can more people go in the Portland area to find out about your 3D printing meetup group? So on meetup.com, we are the Portland 3D print meetup group. There you go. Can't get simpler than that. And then for adopt a hand, is there a website just specifically adopt a hand? It's a, if you Google enable, that's the organization that runs that part. Okay. Enable for printable 3D, 3D printable hands prosthetics. That's awesome. This is great stuff. Democritization, what 3D printing is enabling us to do is amazing, that's amazing. Miguel, thank you so much for talking with me. Thanks for bringing all your stuff to the Maker Faire. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. All right, everybody. Done with another interview here at Portland Maker Faire. There's so many cool people and so much cool stuff here. I hope that you stay tuned. I'm here for another hour and a half until 5 p.m. See you later.