Inspired by an article in Time about Dr. Tom Catena - a lone doctor operating in a war zone - and a 12 yr old boy named Daniel who'd lost both arms (and his sense of self-worth) when a bomb hit his village, Mick Ebeling, having been trained by “Robohand” inventor Richard Van As, traveled with a group of makers to an active war-zone in Sudan and successfully enabled Daniel to feed himself for the first time in 2 years with a 3D-printed prosthetic arm. Before leaving they trained the village to continue to make 3D printed prosthetics and in doing so set up the world’s first open source, 3D-printing prosthetic laboratory in the Nuba Mountains. The technology and design are open-source, DIY and free to all.

Project Daniel utilized a high-tech tool - a consumer-grade 3D printer - to produce a low-tech mechanical prosthetic arm amidst difficult conditions (a refugee camp in the world’s newest nation, and a tiny sub-Saharan hospital in Africa's longest-running war zone).

That this technology could be flown to a place offering such minimal infrastructure, and give independence back to a boy whose future was blown apart, is a beacon for millions of consumers everywhere who lack access.

The "Daniel" arm was a modified version of existing technology - the open-source files for the prostheses required tweaks to protect the hand's "ligaments" and withstand Sudan’s unforgiving climate.

In essence, building the arm requires three steps:

1. 3-D printing the components.

2. Softening medical-grade, breathable plastic and forming it to the patient’s limb to mold a custom-fitted piece on which to anchor the components.

3. Attaching the hand and threading cabling through each digit, running thread back to an attachment point behind the patient’s wrist or elbow. It is the motion of the wrist (up and down) or elbow (side to side) that pulls the cabling and draws the fingers to a close.

This non-invasive treatment enabled Project Daniel to not only deliver an arm to one child, but ensured Ebeling was able to learn the skills, then also train a group of locals (many of whom had no first-hand use of a computer, and NONE of whom had heard of 3D printing) to continue building arms after Ebeling’s departure. 

When Daniel woke up from his amputation surgery, he said, “I wish I could have died. I am going to make such hard work for my family.”

• Goal #1: provide Daniel with a prosthetic arm and hopefully restore his will to live. ACCOMPLISHED.

• Goal #2: establish a 3D-printing prosthetic laboratory and teach locals to build arms by themselves, so that future “Daniels” could be helped after Not Impossible left. ACCOMPLISHED.

• Goal #3: Project Daniel 2.0 is in motion with the mission to establish 15 of these 3D-printing prosthetic laboratories around the world by the anniversary of Daniel feeding himself. ABOUT TO BE ACCOMPLISHED.

• 420M Earned Media Impressions in 14 weeks

• Coverage in 20 countries in the first 7 days.

• Press Coverage: Commercial campaign by Intel. Coverage from TIME, Wired, CNN, NBC, The Guardian, The Independent, Globo (Brazil), CNN, The Statesman (India), El Tiempo (Colombia), Vogue, The LA Times, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Reddit, ADWEEK and Yahoo!

• Proof: With politics delaying each stop, searing heat melting the filament, bugs flying into the printers, and solar power as the only constant energy source, Project Daniel achieved its mission in one of the harshest environments on earth, and stands as proof that nothing is "impossible."