Today’s prosthetics are medical miracles, controlled by impulses from the user’s own muscles. But one myoelectric hand can cost $35,000 and up—a daunting, if attainable, figure for patients with health insurance, but more of a concept than an option for many amputees around the world. So when a team of students at ITESO Graduate School in Guadalajara, Mexico, began working on a new prosthetic hand, their goal was simple: Cut costs.

“We wanted to help people, not make some cool-looking toy,” says Gabriel Herrera, the team’s firmware engineer. That meant prowling a scrap yard for metal and spending just $2000 to make two prototypes in four months. This past summer the students won top honors and $10,000 in an international design contest sponsored by Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor, beating out 775 other entries.

Intended for transradial (below the elbow) amputees, the hand can operate up to four days on a standard 12-volt battery (with another day of run time and just one maintenance check per year in store for the final product). With leads attached to the forearm, the user can open and close the acrylic fingers, regulate grasping pressure and rotate the wrist—a motion not found on some more expensive models.

Herrera and other team members are now starting a company to develop and market the hand. While the final product will likely exceed $2000, the plan is to stay below $20,000. The researchers hope to introduce it in Mexico, where some 4000 people lose a hand every year, and eventually deliver subsidized versions to developing nations, such as war-ravaged Sierra Leone, where medical miracles are in short supply.