OpenSling Wiki¶

Slingshot proved the signal. OpenSling is the open-source follow-through.

Dean Kamen’s Slingshot showed that low-power vapor-compression distillation could turn awful water into clean output. The public rollout never became the open, durable, globally reproducible hardware movement the problem still demands. OpenSling exists to publish the designs, assumptions, fabrication files, test plans, and failure notes anyway.

2006 Slingshot enters public view through Dean Kamen’s TED-era push.[^deka-history]

2012-2015 Coca-Cola and DEKA announce rollout targets, pilots, EKOCENTER scaling, and emergency deployments.[^coke-2012][^coke-2013][^deka-history]

2024 WHO and JMP still report extreme global burdens from unsafe water, poor sanitation, weak hygiene, cholera, schistosomiasis, and malaria-linked infrastructure stress.[^malaria-2025][^jmp-2025][^who-wash-2026][^who-drinking-water][^who-cholera][^who-schisto]

Brief History Of Slingshot¶

The public Slingshot story is impressive and frustrating at the same time.

Date	Publicly documented milestone	Why it mattered
2006-2008	Slingshot became widely known as a compact distillation machine aimed at making potable water from dirty sources.	It reframed water treatment as rugged field hardware instead of fragile aid equipment.
25 September 2012	Coca-Cola and DEKA announced a long-term partnership to deploy Slingshot systems in communities with limited potable water access.²	This was the clearest public scale-up signal: up to 300,000 liters per unit per year, about 10 gallons per hour, and less than 1 kW of electricity.
24 September 2013	Coca-Cola’s EKOCENTER partnership expanded the ambition to 20 countries by the end of 2015, 1,500-2,000 units, and 500 million liters of safe drinking water.³	Slingshot looked like it might become infrastructure instead of a demo.
2011-2014	DEKA’s own site documents pilots in Ghana, Paraguay, and South Africa.¹	There was real field activity, not just stage presentations.
2015	DEKA says Slingshot units were deployed in Dominica after Tropical Storm Erika and provided water until local service returned.¹	This showed emergency-response value.
15 June 2016	Coca-Cola’s flagship Rwanda EKOCENTER release highlighted Pentair reverse-osmosis units, not Slingshot, for safe-water production.⁴	The public story appears to shift from Slingshot-centered rollout to broader EKOCENTER operations with other water technologies.

Inference, not a confirmed shutdown: as of March 13, 2026, the public Slingshot rollout trail I could verify is strongest from 2012 through 2015. Later public EKOCENTER material is still active, but the specific Slingshot-centered scale story becomes much harder to verify in public sources.[^coke-rwanda-2016][^deka-history]

Why The Urgency Is Worse Now¶

OpenSling is not being built in a calmer world. The burden is still enormous:

Problem	Latest sourced figure	Why it matters for OpenSling
Malaria	WHO estimates 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 deaths in 2024, about 9 million more cases than 2023.⁵	Malaria is mosquito-borne, not water-borne, but stagnant water, weak drainage, and fragile infrastructure increase exposure and compound public-health stress.
Drinking water	2.1 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024, including 106 million drinking untreated surface water.⁶	The water-access gap is still measured in billions, not edge cases.
Sanitation	3.4 billion people still lacked safely managed sanitation in 2024, including 354 million practicing open defecation.⁶	Water machines without sanitation awareness solve only part of the exposure chain.
Hygiene	1.7 billion people still lacked basic hygiene services at home in 2024.⁶	Clean water output has to be paired with storage, handling, and hygiene practice.
Contaminated drinking water	WHO says at least 1.7 billion people used a drinking-water source contaminated with faeces in 2022, contributing to roughly 505,000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.⁷	This is the direct case for treatment hardware that is measurable and maintainable.
WASH-attributable mortality	WHO says unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene still drive at least 1.4 million preventable deaths per year.⁸	The burden is still large enough to justify open infrastructure work, not just policy talk.
Cholera	WHO reported more than 560,000 cholera cases and over 6,000 deaths across 60 countries in 2024.⁹	Outbreaks still surge where safe water and sanitation are weak.
Schistosomiasis	WHO estimates 253.7 million people required preventive treatment in 2024.¹⁰	Water contact itself remains a major disease pathway in many regions.

Why OpenSling Exists¶

Slingshot proved that elegant water hardware was possible. OpenSling is here because the problem still exists and the designs still are not open enough.

Open evidence

Every major claim should link back to a public source, a measurement plan, or both.

Open fabrication

Custom parts should ship with editable source files, exported meshes, and enough notes for another builder to reproduce them.

Open failure logs

Fouling, scaling, volatile carryover, leaks, and bad test results are part of the design record, not something to hide.

Open licensing

OpenSling documentation is licensed for CC BY 4.0 reuse, while code and fabrication design sources are licensed Apache-2.0. Copy it, adapt it, and build from it.

Start Here¶

Read Public Specs and Shared-Thread Notes to see which Slingshot details are public, which came from the shared ChatGPT thread, and which remain inference.
Use Alpha Buy List and Missing Pieces to see what you can responsibly order right now and what is still undefined.
Use OpenSling Assembly Overview for the current reference-build sequence.
Work through the component pages before fabricating anything pressure-bearing or potable-water-facing.
Treat the current design as an open engineering baseline, not a certified drinking-water product.