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Design and Additive Fabrication of Foot and Ankle-Foot Orthoses
Foot and ankle-foot orthoses are prescribed in order to promote mobility through supporting
and/or realigning the lower leg and alleviating pain in the foot in different parts of the gait
cycle. This paper will outline new approaches to the design and manufacture of personalised
foot and ankle-foot orthoses (FO and AFO) using additive fabrication technology. The
research is addressing the need for specific software design tools for orthosis design which
enable their properties to be locally tailored within a mass customisation framework.
Structure/material testing to support that activity is also being undertaken and will be
described.Mechanical Engineerin
Cost modelling of rapid manufacturing based mass customisation system for fabrication of custom foot orthoses
PhD ThesisSolid freeform fabrication (SFF) or Additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have
emerged in recent years as advanced manufacturing techniques. These techniques have
demonstrated advantages particularly in situations where the demands for unique
geometrical structured customer-specific products are high and the time to market is
very short. Applications of these techniques in the medical sector in combination with
the latest medical digital imaging technologies are growing quickly. The techniques
have inherent advantages of compatibility with the output information of medical
digitising techniques.
Foot orthoses are medical devices used as shoe inserts in the treatment of foot disorders,
injuries and diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, congenital defects and other
foot related injuries. Currently custom foot orthoses are fabricated through
manufacturing techniques which involve costly and based on lengthy trial and error
manufacturing process. These techniques have limitations in terms of fabricating
required geometries and incorporating complex design features in the custom-made
orthoses.
The novelty of this research is to explore the commercial scale application of rapid
manufacturing techniques and to assess a rapid manufacturing based design and
fabrication system for production of custom foot orthoses. The developed system is
aimed at delivering the custom made orthoses at mass scale with improved fit,
consistency, accuracy and increased product quality.
The traditional design and fabrication process for production of custom foot orthoses
was investigated and modelled with IDEF0 modelling methodology. The developed
IDEF0 model was re-modelled and then the rapid manufacturing approach was
integrated in the design and fabrication process. The main functions of foot geometry
capture, orthoses design and manufacture of orthoses were modelled and evaluated
individually with respect to time and cost and quality of the final product. Different well-established rapid manufacturing techniques were integrated in the current
design and fabrication process. The results showed that the techniques have significant
impacts on the overall design and fabrication process in terms of increased process
efficiency, low lead-time, increased productivity and improved quality of the final
product.
An orthosis model was fabricated on an experimental basis using different well
established rapid manufacturing techniques. The techniques were separately investigated
and analysed in terms of orthoses fabrication cost and build time. The cost and lead-time
in different techniques were modelled, analysed and evaluated for evaluation of
commercial scale applications. The analysis and evaluation of the cost and lead-time
modelled for different rapid manufacturing techniques showed that selective laser
sintering technique is the better option for integrating the technique in fabrication of
custom foot orthoses and that it has the potential to compete with conventional
techniques