After Christian Call suffered an injury on the job and lost the tip of his right index finger, he was determined to find a prosthetic. "Initially I was trying to acquire a life-like prosthetic, but none of them actually worked and the price was out of reach," he told Crave. A few years ago, Call might have simply been out of luck, but advances in consumer 3D printers put him on the path to finding a solution.

Call's journey to create a fingertip started on YouTube. He was browsing and came across a video of a massive 3D printer cranking out plastic wrenches. That got him started on a search for a 3D printer of his own. "I had to have a 3D printer," he said. "I felt that with a 3D printer I could explore a whole new level of creativeness."