Caring through Making

It's been near 4 years since

we borrowed a 3D printer from makerspace DoESLiverpool we think we can open up the club to everyone in a NMC Makerspace!

A Future for the NMC3DPrintClub

Image of Paul's Joystick Modification Print

Caring by making together
Collaborate with Shed Club, Physio & Design
Add Product Design & Development to NMC training offer
Make tech friendly & relevant & visible!
Support action research & social experimentation
Make stuff with people! Visible making!!

Why a NMCMakerSpace?

NMC Hacking Controllers

The group are ready to work on a project led by Kay & Dennis to 'hack' generic game controllers as a therapeutic device, with controllable tension to improve fine motor control and hand strength.

We are looking at developing this into an open-source product so all kinds of people can benefit: with a dedicated space highly visible to the community and beyond we can develop all kinds of work at a...

NMCMakerSpace!

Image of the NMC's current Prusa 3D Printer

NMC3DPrintClub:

Our history!

Thanks to the efforts of the fundraising team and some kindness & generosity, we've had a Prusa maintained and run by Kay for quite a while.

Since then people who came to the first event have met every Tuesday morning by video to design and discuss 3D printing

Here it is in the centre being used to print a prototype PCR testing machine

The NMC Prusa Printer

Print Queue

We started designing things together using Tinkercad and OpenSCAD and then sending Kay our designs for her to print.

Our first project was printing DIY PPE in the first lockdown which you can find out about on our homepage

Making DIY PPE

Inspired by DoES Liverpool's efforts making PPE face shields we used this simple design.

It took a good deal of time consulting with people at DoES and thinking about logistics, design and safety before we settled on this design - and much collaborative work to think about how it might be used by the NMC community

A Printer Of Our Own

After much discussion 2 of us decided to buy an Ender 3 printer, a much cheaper alternative to Prusa, after Ross managed to get a long term loan of an older Ender printer from technologist Adrian McEwen

We can bring these printers into the makerspace and combine with other equipment as our knowledge grows

This is Raul Krauthausen a teacher & activist in Berlin who was one of our first references. He made some portable 3D printed ramps to help him get around Berlin and draw attention to things society might need to change. Society changed the entire surface of the planet to make cars work why not other vehicles?

He then published it on Thingiverse so other people can hack their pavements.

Hack Reality!

After working on face visors & PPE, the first things we designed for our own printers were simple modifications for things - from cooker hobs to missing parts. The main thing was that we designed everything socially online

Chris made a blanking plate for one of the rails on his wheelchair, while Paul made a modified joystick for his chair

Hacking NMC style!

Designing Together

Supporting

We worked with Ross and David Clancy a scientist at Lancaster University to explore how 3D printing was used in biomedical science

We made environments to observe fruit flys, Drosophila melanogaster which scientists use as model organisms - the study of organisms with simpler genetic structure that can be analogous to human genetic conditions

Art-Science NMC style!

This project evolved into a kit to help explore what a 'genetic' condition really means.

From discussions together we observed how scientists who study & experiment with genetic conditions with model organisms and people who have neuromuscular conditions expressed in their body - develop intimate & complex knowledge about it - they care about it in interesting ways