CALE MATTHEWS, BTN REPORTER: Hey, Lois, how you going?
LOIS, YEAR 7: Good, you?
I’m good thankyou, good. How's your day been so far?
LOIS: Good. Yeah, we made pancakes.
Pancakes? Unreal! Was that your brekky?
LOIS: No, that was in class. We did like a mini competition to make things like out of anything we can find in the kitchen.
This is Lois. She's in Year 7 and we're not here just to chat about pancakes. Lois grew up in Phillip Island, off the coast of Victoria. She was born with only part of her left hand when she was around 6 years old, she was given a 3D printed hand by this guy Mat Bowtell.
MAT BOWTELL, CEO 3D PRINTED HANDS: I first met Lois when she was about 6 years old. Lois was born with a congenital hand difference, meaning that she was born without fingers on one of her hands and I got in touch with her family and they thought that I might be able to make her something that will help her to do daily tasks that we all take for granted.
LOIS: I used to live close to his workshop and his kids were like my best friends.
MAT BOWTELL: I was working as a senior engineer in 2014 and it was announced that the automotive industry was going to close in three years. I wanted to be able to find a way that I could, using my engineering skills, put smiles on people’s faces. So when Toyota did close down in 2017, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
After losing his job, Mat used his redundancy money to buy a 3D printer. He'd studied mechatronics, which is like the backbone of robotics, almost 15 years ago and after trying on a bionic arm that costs more than a million dollars, he thought ‘there's gotta be a cheaper way to do this.’
MAT BOWTELL: Like this thing was like something out of Star Wars! The latest World Health Organisation stats estimate that in the world today there are 2.5 billion people that need one or more assistive devices, and out of that only 10 per cent have access to, to the technology. And I, I never forget being saddened that those sorts of, you know, bionic arms, you know, for a million dollars, it's not gonna be accessible to 90 per cent of people on the planet.
So he started a company called Free 3D Hands that use 3D printers and a bunch of sophisticated software to make assistive limbs that, as you may have guessed, he gives away for free!
MAT BOWTELL: The first hand that I actually made was for a 4-year old boy named Eli in New South Wales and I, and I worked with his mum to design help young Eli to design the colour scheme for an Iron Man style. He, he wanted to feel like a superhero, and I was actually sitting at my desk, opening my emails, and I was sent a video and the video showed young Eli opening and closing his hand and just looking at it as you know, he'd never done that before and he just turned to the camera and said, ‘thank you.’ You know, he had this big smile on his face and for me that just changed my whole life.
NEWS REPORTER: Who's making you a hand?
LOIS: Um, Mat!
NEWS REPORTER: Mat’s making you a hand?
Lois was one of Matt's first clients, and what you're watching right now is Lois receiving her very first 3D printed hand when she was six. Fast forward six years and Lois was giving a talk to her classmates at the Nature School in Port Macquarie when she had an idea.
LOIS: We were learning about empathy and like design and stuff, and I had a video to show my class about when I've got my first hand. After that I went to Lloyd at play time and said, “Hey Lloyd, do you know how we got a 3D printer in the classroom?” He's like, “Yeah.” And I'm like, "Can we use it to make 3D hands for other kids?” And he's like, “Yeah, let's do it.” So we got some other kids to join, like to, yeah, help me with it and I was actually, yeah, very surprised that they actually wanted to help, like other kids in the world yeah.
MAT BOWTELL: So we, we got an email from Lois's teacher, Lloyd Godson at the Nature school and said that one of our recipients, Lois, was wanting to 3D print her own kinetic hand using our design, downloading that and assembling that with her classmates.
Lois formed a group that worked together at lunchtimes. Since she was young, Mat had been providing Lois with different 3D hands as she got older. But now Lois wanted to make one herself. So they downloaded a hand design from Mat's company online and spent three months trialling different materials and different measurements.
LOIS: There’s, he's got like a couple designs. He's got an arm as well that you can do. You can do hands. You can do fingers. You can do like toes. He does everything, yeah.
MAT BOWTELL: So Lois's class, to, to make the kinetic hand they, they downloaded all of the files. But then they, they were able to take the specific measurements of Lois's hand difference.
LOIS: Wrist size and stuff like my hand size and arm and stuff, yeah.
MAT BOWTELL: And then apply that to a formula and it tells you what that scale will be. So in the 3D printing software, they're able to scale that to the correct size.
The students have worked with Mat to change different aspects of the design.
MAT BOWTELL: You know, could the, could the design of these grips be improved. They, they, they wondered whether we might be able to include like a little whiteboard in the hand. So if you wanted to take notes or those, those sorts of things.
LOIS: You, you usually use like the wrist movement like that, so it opens and closes when you move your wrists forward and backwards. Yeah like this. Yeah, if I had something to pick up, I would show you, but I don't, but yeah.
Lois wants to share her 3D printed hands with the world and it's part of the reason why Lois and her classmates have been selected to go to Japan to take part in a big international conference.
LOIS: Why I'm going to Japan is because there's a conference there that we're going to called Design For Change. There's kids from all around the world that are going there and it's also run by kids for kids. They like present stuff that helps the environment and like our world.
MAT BOWTELL: And when they told me they were doing that and I'm like “Lloyd, when is this summit?” And he said it was on the the 29th and 30th of November, and I'm like, ‘Oh my goodness, I'm actually gonna be in Japan.’ I’m really, really excited, I'll probably tear up, I'm, I’m so, I'm so proud of all of them.
The summit takes place at the end of November and is part of a global initiative for young leaders to showcase their ideas to fix big problems.
MAT BOWTELL: Over the years, she's just grown so much in confidence. You know, I think she's, she’s gonna be unstoppable when she's older. I think she's just an incredible advocate for people with, living with limb difference, you know, to spread that message in such a positive way.
LOIS: I wanted to encourage other people to try making their own things like 3D printed and also I want to tell the other kids that it's, don't be afraid of like, hiding your hand. Luckily I’m different, like it's cool like it's, I know you don't want to be different, but I think everyone's different.