Activists seek to give 3D-printed robotic hands to war amputees

In a cozy computer workshop shining with cold luminescent light, a cluster of several 3D printers softly murmurs as it processes a print task. At first, the printing heads only produce thin ovals of plastic. But soon, the recognizable contours of artificial phalanges and a wrist appear.

“This is how it works,” says a tall bald man in his early 50s with a distinctive Scandinavian accent as he holds a ready-made white prosthetic hand model. He softly touches a sensor inside the hollow forearm, and the artificial fingers clench into a semi-fist with a robotic buzz.

The man is Leif Bulow, a Danish national living in the Donetsk Oblast city of Kramatorsk some 530 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.