Dhe end-of-life central units, second-hand scanners, a good deal of resourcefulness, that's what it took for a Togolese geographer to create the first 3% recycled 100D printer. A project which also makes it possible to fight against the electronic discharges which abound in Togo.
3D printers, which can print any type of object by modeling or laser, have become democratized from 2012. A market that represents more than 1,5 billion and could rise to 6 billion by 2020. During this Christmas period, many Western companies already offer 3D printers at unbeatable prices for individuals.
“The problem of electronic discharges is getting worse every year in Lomé”. It was in August 2012 that Afate Gnikou, a trained geographer, saw for the first time a “Mendel”, a self-replicating artisanal 3D printer, during a workshop in Lomé.
The machine fascinated me first of all with the creative possibilities it offered. But very quickly, I realized that it was not within the reach of all, because these machines are made from printed parts, themselves made by 3D printers! They often have to be ordered and imported from Europe, which is very expensive. My challenge was then to create an 3D machine using objects at our disposal.
In Lomé, we have a huge problem, which also affects Ghana and Nigeria: electronic dumps. There are a lot of second-hand computers arriving from Europe to Ghana or Nigeria in containers and ending up in our countries. These machines are crammed into open dumps which are very poorly regulated. It's hard to say how many tonnes are there, but what is certain is that the problem is only getting worse with the years. According to a recent report published by Solving the E-waste Problem, 50 million tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste) were generated worldwide in 2012, or around 7 kg per person. These waste streams are expected to reach 65 million tonnes in 2017. According to experts, between 50 and 85% of this waste lands between Nigeria, Ghana and Togo. In addition, by 2017, Africa will generate more e-waste than the European Union.
This problem, Afate Gnikou wanted to solve it in his own way:
It was in the landfills of the Foviépé and Avenou districts, in Lomé, that I went to look for disused central units, old scanners, assembly rails, components ... everything that was reusable for create the chassis and the electronic part of the printer. It took me six months to develop the first prototype. I received the help of, WoeLab (a collective which defines itself as a 'space of technological democracy held by a community that operates on the principles of humility, sharing and collaboration), installed in Djidjolé, a disadvantaged neighborhood from Lomé. This allowed unemployed young people to come and see me work and get involved in the project.
A lot of people tell us that what we do is very complicated, that it is reserved for “the elite”. Personally, I have no computer training, and I followed a literary course during my studies. Building a model like this is just a matter of will and creativity. The first object that we printed, I had imagined it from A to Z on a 3D modeling software: a pen holder. Above, we wrote “right to dream”, our leitmotif from the start. The first object printed by the artisanal 3D printer.
“Printing objects is as easy as downloading a PDF!”
We completed the development phase of the machine thanks to a crowdfunding operation (WoeLab collected € 4316 in donations on the Internet, more than the € 3500 they wanted to raise during this campaign). The machine is capable of printing plastic objects that oscillate from a few centimeters to a meter in length. We sold the first one during the Carrefour des Possibles in Abidjan.
However, we are still in a phase where we need money to make the machine more financially accessible: in the current state, we sell it for 600 € so as not to lose money (a price lower than the first machine price in Europe, but higher than the American self-replicating machines). We aim to manufacture these machines in series, to set up training workshops and to create partnerships with cybercafés to democratize its use. Once you have the machine and the method, all you have to do is download models from the internet, and creating your objects is as simple as opening a PDF file!
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