I agree. So many times the market (the American market anyway) feels justified to label something as "medical" and then charge a 1000x markup. If those same fingers had been made and distributed by a medical prosthetic company, they would have charged here family $5000 for them. I hope that things like this bring some common sense into the market and that people who truly need help and have no resources can get prosthetics that improve their lives.

No doubt those fingers and that same design could have been made many other ways without a 3d printer. It is not solely because of 3d printing that those fingers could exist or have been made. But, the immediacy and simple workflow of 3d printers is enticing people to make things that they just wouldn't tackle if they had to carve a part, cast a mold, pour it and finish it. It takes too long to prototype that way and frequently, that prototype is not usable as the final product. It's just a visual representation. It then frequently needs to be injection molded, etc.

The 3d printer is doing for us what 3d software did for us beginning around 1994. It gives us a quick way to play "what-if." Now we can truly conceive, model, rotate and print ideas in hours that in the decades past were tedious and lengthy endeavors that often took months. 3d printing in combination with 3d software is going to revolutionize product development. And I am thrilled that the little girl got some simplistic fingers for $5. You can't put a price on that but for $5 it makes me smile.