Best Hardware Hack (257 teams) · TreeHacks · Feb 2025

Braille printers normally cost about $1,500, so this team built one for under $15 from a cheap 3D printer. Feed it any document and it punches the whole thing out in braille, even describing the pictures in plain words.

Why it won: The idea arrived at the hackathon itself: a fellow builder mentioned she writes to a blind pen pal by punching every braille letter into paper by hand, because real printers cost too much. The team realized a 3D printer already knows how to move to an exact spot and press, which is all braille embossing is. The best hacks reframe the problem; this one noticed the expensive machine was hiding inside a cheap one.