Meet David Aguilar. He is a nineteen-year-old boy from Andorra, a tiny principality between Spain and France, who is pursuing bioengineering at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Spain. He has created a prosthetic arm for himself, out of Lego.
OUT OF LEGO!
He loved playing with Lego while growing up and those plastic bricks were his favourite toy. He loved building things out of it. Well, all of us at some point in our lives have played with Lego but has any one of us ever thought of building an arm out it? I don’t think so. Houses, cars and castles would be our preferences.
David has had a rare genetic condition since birth because of which he was born without a right forearm. His condition is such that it caused his arm to develop abnormally. He felt different among his friends and that pushed him to do something about it.
“As a child, I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different, but that didn’t stop me believing in my dreams,” David said in an interview. “I wanted to … see myself in the mirror like I see other guys, with two hands.”
And that was his motivation!
David built his very first basic artificial arm when he was nine and kept working on it to improve the functioning every time till it worked. He never gave up. When he grew older, he built another one. He then started his YouTube channel “Hand Solo” which was all about his third build. He named it Mk III because he loves Iron Man.
It is a prosthetic that allows David movement and that’s all he needed. This is how the Mk III works –
It is made out of a 4,000-piece set of a crane and uses an electric motor to perform the movements as a response from David’s right hand.
Well, David has now built a fourth arm, Mk IV, and this one has fingers! This kid is just too amazing.
It just remarkable how a childhood toy inspired a child to build an arm. It comes as a gentle reminder that when life is not fair to some of us, possibilities come in the form of the little things around us, which shape our inspiration and determination. And no one can put a limitation to that. Not ever.
David dreamed of having two arms and he made it happen! Kudos to you, David.
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