Nerdforge's Martina Replaces a Missing Finger with an LED-Equipped 3D-Printed Cyberpunk Prosthetic
When you come second in a fight with table saw, a 3D printer and some ingenuity can make up for what's missing.
Martina, one-half of the Nerdforge YouTube channel, has built a 3D-printed prosthetic finger — to replace one lost in an accident with a table saw years ago.
"Six years ago we were doing some home renovations and I was going to make this nice little shelf thing," Martina explains. "It was going to be the last thing we did for the day and then boom, table saw accident. Suffice to say it was a zero out of 10 experience, would not recommend."
While the loss of a digit hasn't stopped her from making a range of impressive projects in the years since, Martina decided to spend some time putting technology to work in replacing the finger — designing a "super cyber-punky glove" with a functional prosthetic finger included.
"I'm going to use Knick's Prosthetic Finger project as my starting point," Martina explains, referring to Danger Creations' open-source Danger Finger 3D-printable prosthetic digit. "In each of the knuckles there is an elastic that makes sure that when the hand is in an upright position it springs back up and then there's a fishing line connected to this wristband here that goes through the entire finger to the top. So, if I pull that it works as a tendon that closes the finger — so the finger then moves with the rest of the hand."
Martina customized the finger model to scale for her own hand size, then attached it to a glove which could be worn over her damaged hand. An improved wristband and backplate complete the build, bar aesthetics — and no cyberpunk prosthetic could be complete, of course, without glowing LEDs. A 3V battery powers an LED located in the finger's tip, providing a feature missing from old-fashioned flesh-based digits. A final redesign for aesthetic purposes completed the build, with a paint layer offering a metal-like finish.
The full build video for Martina's prosthetic finger is available on the Nerdforge YouTube channel, while the Danger Finger is published to Thingiverse under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike license.