Design of a 3D printer for healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

With the introduction of the RepRap 3D printers, capable of printing most of its own parts, the cost of 3D printers dropped radically, making it an affordable and accessible technology, even for low resource settings. It is said that 3D printing can greatly increase accessibility to medical equipment in low resource settings because it enables local production and radically reduces costs. Within the Delft Global Initiative there are several research teams experimenting with the use of 3D printing for local production of low cost medical equipment in Sub-Saharan Africa. They quickly discovered that 3D printing in this setting is not as easy as it might sound. For one, the operating conditions were found to be much harsher in African, than in Western settings. According to researchers from Penn State University, current 3D printers lack in user-friendliness and robustness required to impact rural healthcare. Therefore, the goal of this project was to (1) identify the challenges for 3D printing in Sub-Saharan Africa, and (2) develop a final design proposal for a 3D printer for healthcare in this setting. The project started with an extensive analysis phase, where Kenya was chosen as a case study of a Sub-Saharan African country. The goal of this phase was to get a deep and qualitative understanding of the context of Kenya, and identify important implications for the design. In the design phase, an extensive amount of time and effort has gone into finding solutions for the challenges identified during the analysis. Solutions were developed to make the printer (1) able to operate on an unstable grid, (2) able to deal with excessive dust and high temperatures, (3) maintain a maximum printing uptime, (4) allow the printer to be used by anyone and finally (5) to allow the printer to be compactly transported. The first deliverable is a list of valuable insights that provides a deep and qualitative understanding in the context of Kenya in relation to 3D printing. This can primarily be used for the development of a 3D printer for low resource settings, but might also be valuable for initiatives working on closely related products in a similar setting. The second deliverable, in the form of a final design proposal, consists of a Prusa i3 printer adapted to fit the context of Kenya. It features a flexible power supply with backup battery, protection against dust and high temperatures, an automatic part ejection system, easy use through smartphone and lastly it is can be compactly transported and quickly assembled. The design proposal was evaluated by a panel of experts from Kenya and the US. They rated the final design to fit the intended user and context very well, but also stressed that it could be tailored more to the healthcare sector. The proposal was considered a better solution than what is currently on the market. More work should be done in the field of usability.