Venezuela update: the biggest shipment yet — 9 crutch kits and over 100 splints out the door

Friday was shipping day again, and this was, by some distance, the biggest batch we've sent to Venezuela yet. When I stacked it all up to photograph before sealing the boxes, I actually had to stop and count twice, because I couldn't quite believe how much had come off the two printers this week.

Let me give you the full inventory, because the numbers this week genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

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What went out on Friday

One box, already sealed, with 9 crutch kits — and each kit is made up of 12 separate printed pieces. That's 108 individual parts, in a single box, that assemble into nine pairs of crutches. Nine people who couldn't walk will be able to move again.

And then the second box, packed with splints:

• 8 children's hand splints
• 6 palm-and-little-finger splints
• 24 finger splints
• 4 foot splints
• 48 finger-extension splints
• 5 children's elbow splints
• 5 small FTM splints
• 5 children's forearm splints
• 5 medium brachiopalmar-model forearm splints (right)
• 5 medium brachiopalmar-model forearm splints (left)
• 4 children's elbow splints

Add the splints up and it's roughly 119 pieces. Add the 108 crutch parts and this single week's shipment is well over 200 printed pieces. Two hundred. From two printers. In one week.

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The crutches went from "can we even do this?" to a production line

I want to dwell on those crutch kits for a second, because they represent something.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about sending our very first pair of 3D-printed crutches, and I was genuinely nervous about it — crutches are load-bearing, they have to hold a person's weight safely, and it felt like a big step up from moulding a splint around a wrist. It was a "can we even do this?" moment.

And now, a fortnight later, we're shipping NINE kits in a single box. We've gone from one tentative first pair to a small production line, twelve pieces per kit, printed, checked, bundled and boxed. That progression — from nervous first attempt to confident batch production — is exactly how this whole initiative has grown. You try one. It works. You trust the design. And then you scale it, because the need is enormous and every kit is somebody's mobility.

Nine pairs of crutches. Nine people who go from stuck in a bed or a chair to being able to stand up and move. In a country where the earthquakes destroyed so much and the hospitals ran out of basic equipment within hours, that's not a small thing. That's independence, printed in plastic.

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The splints: precision, laterality, and children

Look closely at that splint list and you'll notice something that I think is quietly important: the range has become genuinely specialized.

There are right-hand and left-hand versions of the medium brachiopalmar forearm splints now. Laterality. We're not just printing generic supports anymore — we're matching the actual anatomy of the injury, left or right, because a forearm splint has to fit the correct arm to do its job properly. That's the initiative maturing from "print anything that helps" into "print the right thing for the right injury."

And look at how much of this batch is for children. Children's hand splints, children's elbow splints (twice on the list), children's forearm splints. Kids are among the most vulnerable in any disaster, and their smaller bodies need smaller, purpose-designed equipment that simply isn't lying around in an overwhelmed hospital. Every one of those child-sized pieces is a little one who gets properly treated instead of making do with something built for an adult.

The 48 finger-extension splints jumped out at me too. Forty-eight. That's a lot of fingers that get to heal in the correct position instead of setting wrong. The small stuff matters as much as the big stuff — a finger that heals crooked because there was no splint is a lifelong problem, and a two-hour print prevents it.

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Two printers, earning every watt

None of this volume would be possible without the second printer that was donated a few weeks back. Two hundred-plus pieces in a week is simply not achievable on one machine. Having two running in parallel, essentially around the clock, is what turns "a few splints" into "a box of 200 pieces including nine crutch kits."

I keep coming back to this because it matters: that second machine exists because people donated to make it happen. And every single piece it prints is a direct, physical result of that generosity. When someone put money towards that printer, they probably couldn't picture exactly what it would produce. Well, this week it helped produce nine pairs of crutches and over a hundred splints. That's what a donation becomes. That's the chain, from a few euros to a child in Venezuela with a properly fitted splint.

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Where we are

Every week I write one of these I think the numbers can't keep climbing, and every week they do. First it was 50-plus pieces. Then splints plus adapters plus a first pair of crutches. Now it's 200-plus pieces in a week, including nine crutch kits and forearm splints made specifically for left and right arms.

The initiative keeps growing because the willingness keeps growing. More makers, more machines, more filament, more designs — and on the other end, more people in Venezuela getting the equipment they need to heal and to move.

Same invitation as always, and I'll keep making it for as long as this runs: if you have a 3D printer, or know someone who does, there's a place for you in this. And if you can't print, donations become machines, and machines become crutches and splints. The second printer proved exactly that this week.

Technology is worth what it allows us to do for others. This Friday, ours sent nine people the means to walk and over a hundred more the means to heal.

The printers are already back at work on the next batch.