'Open Bionics' is bringing affordable robotic prosthetic hands to the masses with 3D printing

Amidst the plethora of gizmos and gadgets at CES 2015, 'Open Bionics' has to take the cake when it comes to utilizing technology and putting it to good use. Open Bionics creates robotic hands utilizing 3D printing making it affordable and accessible.

Most recently, Open Bionics came in second place at Intel's wearable technology competition, earning themselves a prize of $200,000 USD. As mentioned previously, Open Bionics is unique because they create robotic hands with the use of 3D printers. What this allows Open Bionics to accomplish is to create something that is generally fairly costly and making it accessible and affordable to more people.

Speaking with founder Joel Gibbard, he stated that the entire printing process takes about three days. The hand is created in one piece and the electrical parts are than attached requiring limited construction. Although they are currently focusing on hands, this could open a whole new channel for prosthetics considering that 3D printing is still in its infancy.