Kids Build Their Own 3D-Printed Superhero Prosthetic Hands

A typical prosthetic hand can cost $4,000 or more, and young patients can outgrow several of them during childhood. Rice University bioengineers recently teamed up with Marvel Universe LIVE!, Houston's Shriners Hospitals for Children, and the global online community e-NABLE to offer a free mechanical hand to the families of eight Shriners patients who lack all or part of one hand. The volunteers helped the patients and their families build the hands out of plastic parts that were made on 3D printers at Rice. E-NABLE creates open-source designs for mechanical hand assistive devices that can be downloaded and 3D-printed for under $50 in materials. They are light, rugged, and customizable to a child's changing size, needs, and interests throughout childhood. "One of the recent trends in e-NABLE's 3D maker community is to develop hands on a particular theme," says Rice lab manager Anderson Ta. "Kids love superheroes, and it's really exciting for them to be able to have a hand that matches the theme of their favorite character."

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] yes well it is a superhero day isn't it give me like a hul smash he's so happy I've never seen him this happy it's a miracle it's amazing give me a big hug two two armed hug one of the great things about today is kids are not just getting fully assembled hands they're building the hand themselves they got the parts they got the instructions and

00:00:30 they're learning how to build it together with their parents ready one two adding to the excitement today uh we're here with also with Marvel Universe LIVE who is helping to sponsor this wonderful buildon uh for the enabl community for us here at rice and at Shriners and uh they're helping to uh have customized themes of these hands to match superheroes then down and then

00:00:53 it'll come back up the top where the other one was so these are all kids who have limb reductions meaning that they were born without a part of their hand and you can be born without any part of your hand below the elbow above the elbow but this particular group of kids right here have a little bit of a wrist and no hand at all no thumb no fingers no nothing so they can't hang hang on to

00:01:11 stuff and that sounds like a like a pretty straightforward thing but imagine not being able to hold a water bottle to get the top off or hold your bike so you can ride your bike it's actually pretty significant so all these kids have spent their life not being able to hang on to things and that's what we're able to give them today beautiful want to try it yeah

00:01:35 this is one of the first things people are learning that they could use their plastic 3D printer for you know there's almost 200,000 3D printers out there around the world now and everybody's buying the technology but they're kind of wondering what should I be printing with these um it's kind of like the early days of personal computers so what's been very exciting is people

00:01:53 realize that uh by using the 3D printer you could make these very robust mechanical hands that could help people in need I'm very amazed i' never seen anything like this until James called us and then I looked it up on the internet and I saw the ENA group and I saw all their things they do and it's it's crazy that they can print that like that and the kids can have it that

00:02:21 soon it's affordable number one the whole the whole hand is less than $50 to make see what see what you got oh look at that look at your new hands nice dude he he's six he's going to grow and so um this is something you know under $50 every couple of years that's that's absolutely accessible where 40,000 not so much actually working with patients and seeing them try out the hand for the

00:02:46 first time or like seeing it the sparkle in their eyes as they're moving it that's just this like reaffirms I'm doing the right thing here oh no I think it's going to help him learn to tie his shoes definitely with riding a bike um he's going to be able to carry car his lunch tray carry a water bottle basically carry to things that we take for granted every day he's going to be

00:03:06 able to use it to to carry things I have no idea I can't wait for him to get it on to see what all he can do