Thousands of children in America with missing fingers and hands are being helped by three-dimensional printers that can create cheap prosthetic devices that look like something out of a science-fiction movie.
High-tech regular prosthetics are complex medical devices, powered by batteries and electronic motors, which can cost thousands of dollars, according to
The New York Times. But children grow too quickly to make the investments affordable or practical.
So their parents often give up on them, and the children have to make do with their one useful limb until they are in their late teens, when they can be fitted for a long-lasting normal prosthetic or continue with their 3-D version.
But E-nable, an online volunteer organization founded in 2013 by Dr. Jon Schull, matches children needing prosthetic hands with volunteers able to make them on three-dimensional printers.
"We have several thousand people on our site who are asking to help make hands," said Schull, a research scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What could be more rewarding than using your 3-D printer to make a hand for someone?"
The materials for a 3-D-printed prosthetic hand can cost under $50, says the Times, while noting that some experts believe they work just as well, if not better, than much costlier devices.
The fingers are closed by flexing the wrist, which pulls on cable "tendons." When the wrist is flexed for a second time, the hand opens. An online tool available on
the E-nable website called the "Handomatic," is used to fit the 3-D prosthesis to the child’s arm or wrist.
A parent enters a series of hand measurements, and the tool churns out a custom design for the child that can be downloaded into the printer to create a completely new hand, or a partial hand to replace missing fingers.
The hands are printed in pieces, which are then put together by parents or by volunteers.
Some 50 groups, such as Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, and schools like Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City, have built 3-D hands for about 500 children.
According to the newspaper, one in 1,000 infants is born with missing fingers, and others have fingers and hands lost or amputated due to injury. Each year, about 9,000 children alone have amputations after lawn mower accidents.
Children, both boys and girls, love their replacements hands because they look like something out of science-fiction movies, says Times’ science writer Jacqueline Mroz.
"One popular model, the Cyborg Beast, looks like a limb from a Transformer," wrote Mroz. "The Raptor Hand and Talon Hand 2.X do not suggest disability; they hint at comic-book superpowers.
"And they are not made to be hidden — indeed, they can be fabricated in a variety of eye-catching fluorescent colors, or even made to glow in the dark."
The newspaper highlighted the success story of Dawson Riverman, of Forest Grove, Oregon, who was born without fingers on his left hand and struggled to tie his shoes or hold a ball.
Now 13, Dawson can ride a bike and hold a baseball bat, and he hopes to play goalkeeper on his soccer team.
"He can do things with two hands and not have to try to figure out how do them (with one)," his mother, Dawn Riverman, told the Times.
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