3D printing can bring a lot of goodness into the world. A perfect example to illustrate such goodness is a Sudan project called Project Daniel. This thing was named after a boy who lost both his hands from a war bomb and it offers prosthetic arms to Sudan war victims.

Sudan is a country where war has played a major role in daily life. The Second Sudan Civil war lasted from 1983 until 2005 and the South Sudan Border War afflicted the country in 2012. These wars made a lot of victims and even during a time of peace people could get hurt, as there are still bombs lying everywhere.

Daniel Omar was one of the many unlucky Sudan people to get dramatically hurt. Because of a bomb he lost both his arms when he was only 14 years old. Film producer and media man Mick Ebeling read about this in Time Magazine and decided to do something about it. His company Not Impossible has the purpose of delivering “technology for the sake of humanity.”

He therefore decided to search for people to help him producing low-cost, 3D printed prosthetic arms. After a while, he got his team together, consisting of a Californian 3D printing company, an Australian MIT neuroscientist and the South African inventor of the Robohand. In addition, the companies Intel and Precipart decided to support his project. Together they found a way to produce prosthetic arms for only 100 dollars, in order to be capable of helping as many people as possible. The time needed to produce such prosthetics is just about six hours. However, the consequence of these low costs is that users of these prosthetics can not perform all actions, such as lifting heavy objects or controlling the fingers.

Daniel, who’s lost his hands in 2012, received his prosthetic arms during last year’s November. A 3D printing lab in a nearby hospital was set up and now many others can be helped. Not Impossible already helped a lot of people with new prosthetics, but there is still a potential of thousands to be helped. Here’s a video about this project by Not Impossible:

It’s not the first project of Not Impossible. In late 2010, the company created a device called the Eyewriter in order to help an LA artist who was fully paralyzed because of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). With these glasses he suddenly became able of creating art again and communicating in an easier way. Here’s a video in which Ebeling explains people about this project. Inspiring is his final message: “if something is not possible, make it possible”. Although Ebeling is far from being a technician himself, he somehow always finds a way to make technical innovations happen.

Credits image: Not Impossible.