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Chinese Man Builds His Own Prosthetic Hands

Posted by samzenpus on from the arts-and-crafts dept.

New submitter macbeth66 writes "Almost 10 years ago, Sun Jifa lost his hands in an explosion. Unable to afford the prosthetic hands recommended by the hospital, he built his own. From the article: 'After eight years of tinkering, he says he finally developed a working model that allows him to grip, hold, and mimic other necessary movements via a system of pulleys and wires.'"

6 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Impressive! by steppedleader · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems like this would be hard to do without hands...

    1. Re:Impressive! by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You do realise that by asking a question like that you might find yourself on a list somewhere? Maybe not at the top where Julian Assange rules supreme after OBL's demise, but on the list none-the-less.

      Oh bugger, that probably means I am on it now too.

  2. Groovy by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I went from 'go Chinese man!' to 'one of those could have been a chainsaw!' remarkably quickly.

    I'm trying to decide if that makes me bad.

  3. Inspiring by asmkm22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Say what you will about the Chinese but, if this were an American, he'd be shopping for a book deal and making millions as a motivational speaker. He'd probably get some weird Craftsman sponsorship as well. Instead, he seems genuinely interested in helping other people get access to what he built. It's inspiring, to say the least.

  4. 3D printing for cheap prosthetics by Morgaine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This man deserves a medal for ingenuity under extreme hardship.

    One thing that added unnecessarily to his misery though was that the hospital recommended a prosthetic that he couldn't afford. It's not a huge stretch of the imagination for hospitals to run cheap RepRap-type 3D printers for such needs and print out basic parts on demand. Both the building and running costs are very low indeed.

    Of course such parts would be very poor compared to professional prosthetics or even professional 3D printing, but when the choice is between that and nothing, it's hard to argue against it. And the flexibility of such printing means that it is easily adapted to evolve with individual requirements, and replacement of printed parts is almost cost-free when they break or wear out.

    It seems a good fit for this kind of unfortunate situation, and it might have made this man's days more bearable as he worked on his own solution, or indeed contributed to it where plastic is more appropriate than steel.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  5. Re:See communism works after all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How is China a Communist state?