Printing Spare Parts

 Using crowdfunding from Ulule (French-language link), Afate built a workable 3-D Printing Spare Parts using less than $100 in parts. Ulule investors provided him with a modest $4,000 to develop the low-cost fabricator, and a functional prototype was completed. In his crowdfunding page, Afate compares the potential impact of 3-D printing on society to that of the steam engine in the 19th century.

 The next step for the W.Afate Man Roland Parts is participation in NASA's International Space Apps Challenge, a competition for technology designed to get mankind to Mars. Afate's entry is part of a mixed Togolese-French team that is offering proof-of-concept proposals for developing custom-fabricated mechanical equipment parts. In his proposal, Afate writes that his printer model can allow 3-D printers to be created in any environment using already-existing equipment, and that “rather than send its computing waste to the poor countries, why the West would not send them on Mars?”