Good guy RDJ does it again.
This real-life superhero takes another chance to spread some love and do some real-world good by teaming up with non-profit prosthetic maker Limbitless Solutions. He personally delivers a 3D-printed prosthetic arm modeled after his iconic Marvel character Iron Man to Alex, a 7-year-old born with a partially developed right arm (And the most dapper seven-year-old I have ever met”, RDJ writes on his Facebook status.) This arm doesn’t have arc-reactor energy coursing in its circuits, but even Alex had to calm down a bit before facing this really epic gift.
Limbitless Solutions is a project run by Albert Manero, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering and a Fulbright scholar, and is based at the University of Central Florida. Limbitless Solutions is a team of volunteers who use new technologies such as 3D printing to create inexpensive, durable electronic prosthetics for kids, all for free. Their goal is to help kids in need of prosthetics without having to break the bank to afford what they need.
Quite often, kids can’t get the prosthetics they need because of the high cost of the design, not even counting the expenses for the materials. That’s what Limbitless Solutions is aiming to solve. In Alex’s case, the limb itself only costs $350 in materials — a far cry from the thousands of dollars conventional prosthetics can cost.
RDJ just might take this to a whole new level, he quips: “I’m probably going to start farming out a lot of my tech work to Albert, too. I feel like he could cut the price point down on one of my suits, which is right now, I don’t know, about a billion and a half dollars.”
We can’t wait to see the results, RDJ.
To all the volunteers at Limbitless Solutions, and RDJ, we salute you! You show us it doesn’t take a suit to make a superhero — just the right tools, and a good heart.
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