Hah, a kid finally got his Iron Man prosthetic hand! Kinda disappointed that this isn’t open source, and that only a single kid has it though, I won’t lie.
Originally shared by Pat Starace
Eight year old Iron Kid Tyler gets the 3D Printed Iron Man Prosthetic Hand for his birthday. This was the best day ever, and look forward to continuing development of the hand with Tyler, and his amazing family. ~Pat
This emphasises a good point: Why does the prosthetic have to closely mimic the flesh that it replaces?
Here the prosthetic is enhanced as a children’s toy, but it could be so much more…
Maybe one of the fingers could contain a real screwdriver, or a USB flash drive, or some other useful contraption.
6, or more, fingers? Why not? The prosthetic won’t get frostbite, so it won’t need to wear ordinary gloves.
A small battery could provide built-in torchlight - very useful too.
With 3D printing, the kid (or adult) with the prosthetic could be equipped with the coolest and most useful gadgets around.
This was dope
@Paul_Gross Obviously lights and stuff are cool additions, but a certain degree of biomimicry is important for prosthetic hands.
First of all, the world is designed around hands. Since door handles, tools, bikes, and electronics were all designed with the human hand in mind, the human hand is the best shape to work all those things with. Some different designs might be better for one of those tasks, but good luck finding one that’s better at most or all of them.
The other benefit is psychological, particularly with little kids looking different isn’t exactly desirable, so hooks and other very functional-yet-ugly prostheses embarrass them. Plastic toy looking hands, especially ones with cool styling like this one, give them a much better sense of self image, and a sort of feeling of wholeness.
@Nick_Parker
With respect to the psychology of kids - the coolness of this hand has less to do with the correct number of digits than it’s association with a cool superhero.
Hooks for hands, and also eye-patches - pretty cool for kids due to their association with pirates, even though pirates are ugly looking. That’s kids for you!
Having extra digits, extra functions, widely different morphology, when carefully engineered, is more likely to enhance a kids self esteem than harm it. Remember - the kid that needs a prosthesis looks different anyway to start with.
Oscar Pistorius - the ‘blade runner’ - has well designed and enhanced prosthetics that permit him to run faster than most people, despite the morphology of the prosthetics being very different to real human legs.
What kid wouldn’t be happy to bolt-on something that made them perform above and beyond their peers? Unusual shapes shouldn’t preclude the ‘cool’ factor.
Know this much, that kid has the coolest hand I’ve seen next to a real one, every other kid is gonna think so to.
