Author: Marshall Rhinehart
Nursing students need to practice venipuncture, the skill of inserting a needle into a vein to draw blood, hundreds of times before they do it on a patient. The training arms they practice on are specialized commercial equipment, and sim-lab budgets only stretch so far. That practical teaching problem is what brought University at Buffalo School of Nursing faculty to 469 Franklin, a workspace and workshop on Franklin Street where members build real things for real users.
The collaboration started with a simple conversation: what does a training arm actually need to do, and how much of that could be 3D-printed and assembled in a neighborhood workshop? Working with nursing faculty input on anatomy, vein feel, and classroom durability, the 469 Franklin workshop team designed and built a reproducible venipuncture training arm: printed parts, embedded vein channels, and a build process any reasonably equipped makerspace could follow.
This month the project hit its first real milestone: workshop members Noah Owsiany and Jacob Rhinehart packed the first production batch of six finished arms into a box labeled “3D Printed Venipuncture Arms, 469 Franklin Workshop, to UB School of Nursing” and delivered them in person. Faculty put the arms to work immediately, including mounting one on a patient simulator in a hospital bed so students practice the full sequence of approach, positioning, and draw the way they would on a ward, not just on a tabletop…