Engineer and IT Consultant Team up to Make Free 3D Prosthetic Arms for Kids

By Vishal Goel, | December 29, 2016

Team Unbilimited gifts a boy with a prosthetic arm. (YouTube)

Team Unbilimited gifts a boy with a prosthetic arm. (YouTube)

Stephen Davies and Drew Murray are providing free 3D prosthetic hands and arms for children who are born without them as part of a project known as 'Team Unlimbted.' They have open-sourced a blueprint, meaning anyone with the required equipment can make one. 

Stephen Davies is a CAD (computer-aided design) engineer and a father of three. He was born without a hand. He started researching for a prosthetic which led him to Drew Murray, an IT consultant from Milton Keynes and a part of a volunteer network called e-Nable that makes free 3D prosthetics for children.

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Davies asked Murray to make a hand for him and this way. Davies was blown away by the fact that he was able to afford the prosthetic which gave him a boost of confidence walking down the street. The team paired up, and Davies invested hundreds of pounds in two 3D printers and materials. With a new design and the existing flaws fixed, Team Unlimbited was born.

The first recipient of a prosthetic from the team was a nine years old girl named Isabella. With her own pink and purple themed "little arm," she is now learning to play the piano, walk the dog, play ball with her brother William and turn pages in a book much more easily. Isabella also appeared in an advertising campaign for the 2016 Paralympics and has received three arms so far.

Although Davies works full time on the project, he does it for free without even charging for the postage. Each hand costs about £30 to make and takes 12 hours. Currently, the team has been getting loads of requests. Also, the design is not CE-marked, which means it cannot be sold.

The cost of traditional prostheses is very high, which can cost thousands of pounds. Although Davies' device is not as robust, he claims that children get bored quickly and regularly with their prosthetics and require new ones anyway, so they do not necessarily need a long lifespan.


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