Today in TechChinese man builds his own bionic hands from scrap metal
When life hands you lemons, you make prosthetic hands. At least that's what Sun Jifa did after losing his mitts to a homemade bomb he'd been building for fishing.
Jifa couldn't afford the prosthetics offered to him by the hospital, so he began designing his own. The process took him eight years to complete, using a series of crude replacement hands — some with welded on tools, such as hammers — to fashion the final product. They're made from scrap steel and other metals Jifa was able to scavenge.
His finished prosthetics have individual fingers that are able to firmly grasp objects. They're controlled using wires and pulleys, which Jifa can pull using his elbows. He says the only drawback is that "they're quite heavy" and "get hot or cold in the extreme of summer and winter."
Jifa hopes to take what he's learned in building his replacement hands and apply it to constructing affordable prosthetics for other low-income people who have lost limbs and can't afford replacements. This isn't the first time that we've heard of designing their own prosthetic limb, but it's definitely the most impressive, given the limited resources he had to work with.
[Image credit: Robot hand holding wrench via Shutterstock]
This article was written by Randy Nelson and originally appeared on Tecca
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