Three years ago, Ian Davis was diagnosed with a cancer that weakens the bones. Shortly after, the engineer had an accident in his machine shop that resulted in physicians amputating four fingers on his dominant hand.

“When I was still in the hospital I started designing a prosthetic hand," Davis told KOBI News last year. "It was kind of my day job. That’s what I used to maintain my sanity.”

Davis's work-in-progress is an elegant feat of engineering. Coincidentally though, this isn't new maker territory for him. Long before he lost his fingers; he built a prosthetic arm as a high school science project.

You can follow the project's development on Davis's YouTube channel and Instagram.

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Out in the wild, figuring out different hand gestures.

A post shared by Ian Davis (@acmeworksfab) on Jul 23, 2020 at 9:52pm PDT

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After many weeks of designing and prototyping, I finally have the splay feature pretty well dialed! There were points during this process that I was getting concerned I was chasing a frivolous function, but after using it for half a day so far, I have no doubt that it was completely worth the time and effort.

A post shared by Ian Davis (@acmeworksfab) on Jul 1, 2020 at 10:52am PDT

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