PrintLab and Autodesk Launch the 2025 Make:able Challenge

1st November 2024 • News

About Make:able

For those not familiar with Make:able, it is an annual, free challenge designed for anyone interested in assistive technology, whether you’re a student, maker, or professional. Each year, we invite participants to work in teams of up to 5 to ‘Design and make a 3D printed product or prototype that improves the day-to-day life of someone with a disability or the elderly’. Teams then have the opportunity to share their solutions and stories in a 2-4 minute video submission for a chance to win fantastic prizes, such as 3D printers, 3D scanners, filament, and more.

Our approach has been to shape Make:able as more than just a competition; it’s centred around an online toolkit that guides participants through a step-by-step learning experience to design and create an assistive device. For educators, there’s also a comprehensive teacher’s pack with example lesson plans, curriculum alignment documents, and more.

The Make:able Workbook

The biggest update this year is the Make:able Workbook – an interactive digital PDF, which accompanies the online toolkit of resources. The workbook is designed to assist you in planning your strategy for each stage and capturing key insights, helping you stay organised and focused throughout the process.

 

 

As you move through the online toolkit, you’ll find guiding instructions that prompt you to fill in the relevant sections of the workbook. Its interactive features include checklists, text fields, and spaces to upload images – all of which help you to allocate roles, set timelines, plan design methods, summarise findings, and much more.

 

Make:able Champions

Although collaborating with a real end user in your local community is ideal, it might not always be possible. Therefore, each year we collaborate with Make:able Champions. These are volunteers with disabilities who kindly share their story and day-to-day challenges in videos within the toolkit. This enables participants to select a Champion as their end user, and by analysing their video and developing empathy through research, simulations and other methods, they can design a concept solution for them.

Based on feedback, this year we’ve made the decision to bring back all Make:able Champions from previous years – giving participants a broad range of people and disabilities to select from.

 

 

If you decide to design a solution for a Champion, you may not be able to speak directly to them. However, at the end of the challenge, we will be selecting several entries to:

• Present to Champions to see if they would like to try them.
• Work with PrintLab to refine solutions for open-source sharing.

 

Insights

The ‘News’ section of the Make:able website has now been refreshed and rebranded into our ‘Insights’ section. In addition to blogs and updates about Make:able, you’ll find more example submissions, open-source devices, and a series of educational webinars from industry experts and past participants.

 

 

Throughout the year, we’ll be adding new devices and collaborating with the wider community on additional webinars to support your Make:able journey.

 

Key Dates

The Make:able 2025 Challenge toolkit update is now live and here are some key dates/milestones:

16th May 2024 – 15th May 2025: You may work on your submissions at anytime between these dates and there is no minimum or maximum time you can spend on the challenge. Submissions must be uploaded to section 8 of the toolkit by 15th May 2025.

15th May 2025 – 31st May 2025: Team PrintLab will create a finalist shortlist of approximately 6 entries per award category in each of the 3 age groups. The finalist shortlist will consist of the entries that excelled the most in the design criteria relating to the award category.

1st June 2025 – 30th June 2025: An expert panel of judges will review the finalist submissions. Each judge will be allocated a specific award category and will cast votes for a 1st and 2nd place. 1st place will receive 2 points and 2nd place will receive 1 point.

1st July 2025: The points from each award category and age group will be counted and the 18 winners will be announced via email. Prizes will then be shipped out to the schools/organisations of the winning teams!

 

Get Started

We welcome you to learn more about the challenge and register on the platform by clicking the link below. Please note that if you have already signed up to Make:able, you will need to re-register to get the new toolkit access code. Let’s get making!

 

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