West Africa: WoeLab Dreates 3D Printer and Robot from E-Waste

2012 WoeLab was founded in Togo with the target to give young people a deeper insight into new and modern technology. After years they got a real makerspace and now the team has built their second 3D printer out of material that others call waste.

4,000 Dollar where collected with a crowdfunding campaign. With this money they bought electronic waste – they were especially interested in computers, printers and scanners because in these devices are lots of useful and fully functional parts, for example stepper drives in printers and scanners. One of the projects that was made using these parts was W.Afate, that’s a miniature 3D printer build out of electronical waste.

The 3D printer was named after Kodjo Afate Gnikou – a 22 year old guy that has created a 3D printer in 2013 and he was also involved in the current project. After publishing their results, a local company has announced that they will start supporting the WoeLab. And the young team can need the support because they have big goals. All schools around the WoeLab should get a 3D printer and a cyber café will be opened. Furthermore all interested people should learn how a 3D printer works and how the WoeLab created one out of e-waste.

 We want to put a 3D printer in every school and cyber cafe in this one kilometre area of Lomé. We are working with 10 schools this year and teaching the young people how to draw in 3D in school and after the idea is to put the 3D printers in each one of these schools… our objective is to put them in the hands of everyone.

However, a 3D printer is not the only project of the WoeLab. They are developing a robot called Ifan and of cause the robot is also build out of electronic waste. What makes this project so special is that Togo is one of the poorest countries in the world and even there people have teamed up and created cool things like 3D printers or robots out of the material they have: electronical waste.