The Guardian:
German car manufacturer BMW has turned to 3D printing to physically augment its car-plant workers, giving them stronger, augmented thumbs.
The 3D-printed apparel acts like support brackets for the workers’ thumbs, reducing strain and helping them to fit certain parts into the cars more easily.
Each “thumb” is created as a custom orthotic device using a portable 3D camera, which captures the unique size and shape of each line-worker’s thumb.
You need to look at the pictures to truly get this. Really cool use of 3D printing technology.
Hey, hoser! It’s a holiday, eh? Go have a few beers.
That’s fascinating. I love reading about people’s ingenuity. And my respect for BMW just went up a couple of notches.
I wonder if this can be applied to foot orthotics.
I can’t help to think about a very well researched article about american football players and the impact that shock reducing helmets had on their physical and mental wellbeing. The ability to endure greater forces to your head meant greater long term injuries to the brain and a rise in illnesses such as depression and alzheimers (or parkinsons, ironically I don’t remember which one it was). What I’m going for is that easing the load for one part of your body might easily affect an adjacent part in the long term, in this case the forearm or wrist joint. That’s just an initial thought though, I’m sure they’ll be fine.
I guess, but would it have been better if BMW told employees that were having thumb strain to just get back to work? They are trying, which is more than I can say for many other companies.