What's happening.

I might be in a documentary

Last summer, during my internship at Free3DHands, a film crew came to visit. They were there to document the work of Mat Bowtell, who has spent years using 3D printing to build prosthetics for people who need them. The project they were filming was a documentary called The Last Inventor: Chuck Hull, 3D Printing and Hope.

Chuck Hull is the man who invented stereolithography on the night of November 10, 1983, in a lab in San Gabriel, California. That is the technology all modern 3D printing is built on. Without that night in that lab, none of what I do would look the way it does.

He was there at Free3DHands that day. I got to meet him. I was also asked if I would be willing to be interviewed for the film. I said yes, and tried to say something coherent on camera about why this work matters to me. Whether any of it was useful to them, I genuinely had no idea. I spent most of the following months assuming I had ended up on the cutting room floor.

Then in December 2025, I came across an article in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal written by journalist Habeba Mostafa, about Anntionette Hull, Chuck's wife and the film's producer. I wrote to Habeba in May to ask if she had any update on the release, and quietly, whether I was still in it.

She was kind enough to follow up with Anntionette directly. A few days later I had an invitation to the world premiere.

The premiere is on November 10, 2026, the 43rd anniversary of the night Chuck cracked the code. It is being held at the American Legion Hall Post 43 in Hollywood. There is a media event in the morning, a meet and greet in the afternoon, and the screening at 6:30 in the evening, followed by a book signing. Anntionette is also releasing a book under the same title.

I am still a little stunned. I will update here after November.

His robot Chase hand

The hands arrived in Strand on March 5. Chantel messaged the same day. Noah had already tried both on and was excited. The 65% fit well. The 55% was a little small.

In the weeks after, she started making small adjustments without asking me. First she added a strip of foam inside the socket where the plastic was pressing on his skin. That was all it took. He wore it to school two days in a row, and his teacher noticed he was using it more.

Then she replaced the velcro straps with soft elastic she bought herself and sewed on by hand. Now Noah can put the hand on and off without any help. He does it himself. That matters a lot to a four-year-old.

He also covered it in Paw Patrol stickers. Chase is his favorite, so as far as Noah is concerned, the dark blue hand is now officially his robot Chase hand. Chantel says he shows it to everyone. His friends, his teacher, anyone who will look.

Then she sent the cricket bat photos. Noah in a blue Batman shirt, holding the bat with his prosthetic hand, grinning like he has no intention of putting it down. I did not design the hand with cricket in mind but there it is, doing the job.

One more thing I did not expect: a prosthetist in the Western Cape found Noah's case online and reached out asking for the design files so he can print more hands locally for children in South Africa. I sent them the same day.

The full story is on Noah's case page.

Noah with the cricket bat  ·  Strand, April 2026

The robot Chase hand, Chase stickers and all

O.C. wore her arm to school

I found O.'s case while browsing old e-NABLE requests that had never been fulfilled. She was four years old, in Abuja, Nigeria, born with a right limb difference below the elbow. Her case had been sitting on the hub since December 2024. Her father Phil had submitted measurements and photos and waited. No volunteer had taken it.

I reached out. Phil replied the same day. He said she loves pink. I made her a pink Kinetic Arm at 57.5% scale, sized for a young child. Phil had mentioned a slight curve at the tip of her residual limb, so I printed a second arm too, purple and yellow, with a modified inner cover that had a cutout to accommodate the curve. I wanted to make sure at least one of them would fit. I shipped both to Abuja on February 19.

The arms arrived on April 15. The e-NABLE website had been down for weeks, so Phil had no way to reach me. I reached out through the phone number he had shared for the shipment. He wrote back the same night: "Yes, we received it on the 15th of April and it's lovely. Olanna has tried both and they fit so well."

Then he sent photos. O. in her school uniform, Barbie backpack on, using her pink arm to push open the school gate on her way in. I was not expecting that. I still think about it.

O.C. on her way to school, Abuja  ·  April 2026

Using her arm to open the school gate

Phil also sent a message that I keep coming back to: "Thank you Laila. I am speechless. Olanna is filled with joy."

The full story is on O.'s case page.

S. tried her arm for the first time

On Monday, April 6, I got a message from Luai, the coordinator in the West Bank who helped me get S.'s arm to her. He sent me a video. She was trying it on for the first time.

In the video, Luai says she has had it for only fifteen minutes. You can already see her figuring it out, adjusting, trying again. Fifteen minutes in and she is already getting better. I have been working on her case for a long time, and to see that moment was something I am still not sure how to put into words.

Luai also shared that her family is very grateful and are praying for me. I did not expect that. I am just a teenager in New York with a 3D printer. The fact that a family in the West Bank is thinking of me is something I will carry for a long time.

They also made a TikTok about it, which you can watch below. The full YouTube video is on S.'s case page if you want to follow her story from the beginning.

Watch on TikTok  →

Presenting my volunteer work to the global e-NABLE community

On April 2, I was invited to present at the e-NABLE Education and New Members meeting, led by Prof. Ian Roy from Brandeis University, and joined by Mr. Jon Schull, the co-founder of e-NABLE. I had no idea what to expect. I just wanted to share what I had learned in a way that might be useful to someone starting out.

I walked through my whole journey: how it started with just printing hands from the e-NABLE website, my first real case in the Philippines, the design challenges I ran into with Manahil in Pakistan, my internship at Hand in Hand in Egypt, meeting Mr. Mat Bowtell at Free 3D Hands in Australia, the cases in Romania, Nevada, China, Uganda, Palestine and more. I also talked about how I find cases on the hub, the materials I have tried, and the independent study I am doing on bionic arms at school now.

It was the first time I had sat down and looked at two years of work all at once. A lot has happened.

The meeting on Zoom, April 2, 2026

Presenting the Kinetic Arm slide

The full recording is on YouTube if you want to watch it:

Full recording  ·  e-NABLE Education and New Members  ·  April 2, 2026

The feedback from the group was something I did not expect. Mr. Jon Schull invited me to join the monthly town hall as a regular contributor, which I am genuinely considering. Mr. David, who has been an e-NABLE volunteer for over 10 years and worked as a mechanical engineer in medical devices and surgical robotics, said some things that really stayed with me.

I am still processing all of it honestly. I came in just wanting to share what I had learned, and I left with people offering to help me with CAD, materials, equipment, and more. That is what this community is. I am so grateful it exists. It started everything for me.

Building a bionic arm as an independent study at Scarsdale High School

As part of an independent study this semester, I am designing and building a bionic arm, one that uses electromyography sensors to detect muscle signals and translate them into movement. It is a significant step up from the Kinetic Arms I build through e-NABLE, which are body-powered and require no electronics. This project is pushing me into territory I have never worked in before: circuits, signal processing, and motor control alongside the printing and assembly I already know.

The design I am building is the El Medallo Bionic Arm, created at eNABLE Medellin by a team of designers: Mark Walbran, Oliver Vogel, Ben Complin, Esteban Rojas, Mohit Mothukuri, Elena Guss, and Bryn Davis. It is described as the world's cheapest-to-fabricate open source bionic prosthetic, which is part of why it made sense for this project. The mechanical design is a variant of the Kwawu Arm by Jacquin Buchanan.

What makes it genuinely interesting from an engineering standpoint is the grip system. The arm has two distinct grips: a pinch grip and a power grip, each triggered by a different muscle contraction picked up by the EMG sensors. Two servo motors control the fingers, and the timing of each motor is what produces the different grip types. The estimated build time is around 80 hours from start to finish, including sourcing parts, soldering, calibrating the sensors, and assembly. That does not count any time needed to customize the fit for a specific person.

What immediately struck me about it compared to everything I have printed before is the palm. In a standard Kinetic Arm the hand is mostly solid. Here, the palm is hollow, with a separate cover that fits over it. That cavity is where all the wiring, sensors, and electronics will live. It is a completely different way of thinking about the structure of a hand. I am printing in black and silver PETG. The palm is the first major component off the printer, and seeing it in person made the whole project feel much more real.

This summer I am going to LSU to 3D print concrete houses

I had a Zoom call with Prof. Kazemian from Louisiana State University, and he was very welcoming. He said he is happy to have me join his lab this summer. We have not locked in dates yet, but the plan is coming together.

His research group, the RECAST Lab, includes students from multiple engineering disciplines. That is something he specifically mentioned as a benefit, that I would get exposure to how different kinds of engineers think and work. He also told me they are getting the largest 3D printer on the LSU campus within the next month, and the whole team is excited about it. On top of that, the lab does research with NASA, and he said I would be free to choose which research direction interests me most. There is even a possibility they could pay me for the internship, which I was not expecting at all.

The work itself is large-scale 3D printing of concrete structures. The same fundamental technology I use every day for prosthetics, layer by layer, material by material, just at a completely different scale. I am genuinely curious to see what carries over and what does not. A summer in Baton Rouge doing this kind of work sounds like something I will not forget.