The Winter Soldier ain't got nothing on this student's DIY prosthetic LEGO arm

When life gives you lemons, make LEGOs. That seems to be the takeaway from a recent Reuters story profiling 19-year-old  David Aguilar, a college student from Andorra (a principality between Spain and France), who, after a rare genetic condition, was born without a right forearm.

So what did he do? He made one out of LEGOs.

A life-long LEGO fan (and current EDM creator who goes by the handle Hand Solo!), Aguilar made his first prosthetic LEGO arm when he was nine years old. It started out as a boat, but he eventually built it to go around his arm. It wasn’t exactly Winter Soldier sturdy though.

So after finding LEGO Technic, which allows builders to create more advanced, complex models, Aguilar made the MK-I — a naming convention he uses as a shout out to Tony Stark's Iron Man suits. And while Aguilar is self-sufficient without the prosthetic, that model was strong enough to do push-ups upon. And it gave him inner-strength as well.

“I wanted to ... see myself in the mirror like I see other guys, with two hands,” said Aguilar, who did his fair share of flexing in the mirror after the creation of MK-I.

While that model is no doubt impressive, it’s been thoroughly improved upon with the MK-II, which Aguilar built from a LEGO Technic plane, and uses an electric-motor-powered cinch to grab everyday objects like golf balls, as demonstrated in his video below. 

The confidence that Aguilar has gained from his prosthetic LEGO arm has given him the impetus to share such a gift.

As he told Reuters about other people with similar disabilities: “I would try to give them a prosthetic, even if it’s for free, to make them feel like a normal person, because what is normal, right?”