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Walt Disney once said that animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.

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He was talking about cartoons but advances in technology have taken

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that basic concept to a whole new dimension.

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Michelle Miller shows us how the idea of a modern day inventor became a 3D reality.

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Grabbing a backpack is hardly the feat of a superhero

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unless you're 12-year-old Leon McCarthy

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and you're hand looks like it's straight out of a science fiction movie!

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Michelle: You've actually become sort of a ...

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Leon: Cyborg!

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Michelle: There's a cool factor

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Leon: Yeah, it's special instead of different.

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Leon has been special since birth.

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When he was still in the womb, restricted blood flow prevented his hand from developing.

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I saw his hand sticking up and there were no fingers on it.

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And it was hard for my wife, it was hard for me.

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Two years ago, his father, Paul, began the search for an inexpensive, functional prosthetic

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What he found was this internet video posted by Ivan Owen, an inventor in Washington State.

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I've always had this vision of people being able to build their own prosthetic device at home.

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Owen, and a collaborator in South Africa, designed a hand that could be

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made by a 3-dimensional printer.

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It's essentially like a hot glue gun. It's plastic that feeds into it,

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the printer head gets really hot, it liquifies that plastic and then, layer by layer

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it creates an object.

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The design relies on wrist movement. Downward motion creates cable tension that

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closes the fingers while a move upward opens them.

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The assembly instructions were posted for free on the internet so someone like

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Paul McCarthy in Marblehead, Massachusetts could print it.

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He took the idea to his son.

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Leon: I thought he was a little crazy.

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He was like "We can print all these fingers and then like, clip them all in"

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and it was a little too much.

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Michelle: The first time you saw it, and when you tried it out

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Leon: It was pretty awesome, yeah.

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Michelle: What made it awesome?

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Leon: I could pick up, say like, a water bottle, like say, I could pick up my pencil.

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Michelle: What is it like to see him with this?

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Making your kids happy is like the most rewarding thing you can have as a Dad, right?

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The price tag was also appealing.

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Mini 3D printers sell for about $2000, materials are far less expensive.

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This thing cost us like 5-bucks, 10-bucks, you know, whatever, it was nothing.

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What would a prosthesis cost you?

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$20,000 ... $30,000.

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The cost allows father and son to experiment with newer designs.

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Leon: When I outgrow a hand we can easily make a new one.

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It's a do-it-yourself solution that was unthinkable before technology made ideas printable!

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That's cool ... ... Yeah.

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Michelle Miller, CBS News, Marblehead, Massachusetts.