How A $100 3D-Printed Arm Is Saving The Children Of Sudan

A company called Not Impossible Labs has come up with one of the best uses for 3D printer technology we've ever heard of: printing low-cost prosthetic arms for people, mainly children, who have lost limbs in the war-torn country of Sudan.

The project was the brain child of Mick Ebeling, founder of Not Impossible, a company dedicated to "technology for the sake of humanity." Not Impossible is probably best known for its "Eyewriter" eye tracking glasses, created with free open source software, that helped a paralyzed graffiti artist draw and communicate using only his eyes.

Project Daniel started in 2012, when Ebeling read a story in Time magazine about Daniel Omar, a then 14-year-old Sudanese boy who lost both his hands from a bomb.

It inspired Ebeling to assemble a team capable of creating a low-cost, 3D-printed prosthetic on consumer-grade 3D printers. The team included the South African inventor of the Robohand, an Australian MIT neuroscientist, a 3D printing company in California and was supported by Intel and an engineering company called Precipart.