Controlling the variable of pressure in the production of test footwear impressions

Footwear impression lifting and enhancement techniques may be affected by several variables introduced during the production of test footwear impressions, thus limiting the usefulness of enhancement technique comparisons and the results obtained. One such variable is the force applied when the impressed mark is being made. Producing consistent test impressions for research into footwear enhancement techniques would therefore be beneficial. This study was designed to control pressure in the production of test footwear impressions when mimicking a stamping action. Twenty-seven volunteers were asked to stamp on two different surfaces and the average stamping force was recorded. Information from the data obtained was used to design and build a mechanical device which could be calibrated to consistently deliver footwear impressions with the same force onto a receiving surface. Preliminary experiments using this device and different contaminants on the footwear sole have yielded consistent and repeatable impressions. Controlling the variable of pressure for the production of test impressions in this study demonstrated that the differences observed were visual (due to the amount of contaminant transferred and subsequent enhancement) and did not affect the replication of outer sole characteristics. This paper reports the development of the device and illustrates the quality of the impressions produced

A concurrent engineering approach to develop BioMEMS employed in a deep brain stimulator integrated with a drug delivery system

This paper presents an Integrated Product Development (IPD) based model to specifically develop bio-medical micro-electro-mechanical-systems (BioMEMS). The concurrent engineering model is based on the IPD model phases, which are presented and formulated by the Integration DEFinition (IDEF) model- ling language. To evaluate the IPD model, a case study concerning the development of a BioMEMS device for a deep brain stimulation (DBS) system was investigated. By following the relevant mechanisms and controls in the model, a design concept of a wireless head-mounted DBS implant integrated with a drug delivery system (DDS) was conceived. The contribution of this paper is the IDEF model, which provides a road map to the product development team members in order to take a concurrent engineering approach to develop Bio-MEMS. The qualitative feedback received from the identified stakeholders, together with the quality of the case study employed, namely, an integrated DBS and DDS solution, indicate a degree of evidence that the model provides a sound basis in this direction.peer-reviewe

Rapid fabrication of annuloplasty rings by electron beam melting

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is an Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology capable of producing intricate parts by melting powder metal with the aid of an electron beam gun. EBM has facilitated the production of standard and customisable implants. Customizable implants such as orthopaedic implants, cranial implants and dental implants have already been developed and implanted successfully after being fabricated by AM technology. Other medical devices can also benefit from the possibilities offered by AM. An example of such a medical device would be the annuloplasty ring. Standard annuloplasty rings are implanted whenever a patient is diagnosed with mitral valve regurgitation. This problem arises when the mitral valve does not close properly, causing back leakage through the closed valve resulting in blood flowing to the atrium instead of the aorta during systole. The latest designs of annuloplasty rings allow restoration of the mitral annulus configuration to a saddle-shaped shape.peer-reviewe

Towards intelligent early form design and prototyping, questionnaire results and analysis

Currently, the Department of Manufacturing Engineering (DME), University of Malta and the Istitito per la Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche (IMATI), Genoa are conducting research on how simple components represented by sketches on normal paper can be converted to computer models. One of the key issues in developing a sketch recognition system is precisely to handle the trade-off between ease of computer recognition and the preservation of sketching freedom. With an attempt to address this issue, two sketching methods (or sketching languages) have been developed by the DME. This report presents the results of a questionnaire about the sketching activity itself and also about the two proposed sketching languages. An analysis of the results obtained is also presented with the scope to identify what should be the future directions that might contribute to enhance the usefulness of the two sketching approaches

'Form Design For Emotion' with a Cameraphone Based Tool

Merging emotional value into products has become an essential strategy for increasing a product’s competitive edge in the consumer market. Indeed, this approach instills emotional value into products, to satisfy human emotional needs. Combined with this is the fact that designers usually work outside their design office using pen and paper, since ideas are usually stimulated. Yet, designers lack mobile computer-aided sketching (CAS) tools which truly link paper-based sketching with computer-based 3D modelling tools. As a step in this direction, this poster presents a framework that extends CAS technology to cameraphones. Furthermore, this framework is capable of providing emotional guidance about a form concept to satisfy the emotional needs of the customer, directly on cameraphones. A proof-of-concept tool has been implemented and evaluated. Preliminary evaluation results with design engineers in the cosmetic cases industry, indicate the positive impact that technology based on the framework developed will have on DFe in practice

Influence of sketch types on distributed design team work

Product development is a collaborative activity more often than ever carried out by distributed design teams. It is critical to determine how sketches are used in such environments in order to improve the design process. Sketches produced by students participating in a collaborative design project of three European Universities are classified according to the intention of the designer when producing a sketch, the level of detail shown in the sketch and the phase when the sketch was produced. The adapted classification system used in this paper helps to analyse type of sketches with most variety of ideas. Furthermore, this paper reviews which type of sketches offers the most potential to be further developed. Results show that persuasive sketches offer the broadest range of ideas since they are produced as a combination of ideas from brainstorming sessions. Shared sketches help to achieve consensus in decision-making since the sketches are most likely to be produced by the entire group rather than individually

A case study on the design of a modular surgical instrument for removing metastases using engineering design tools

Metastatic cancer is a form of cancer stemming from a primary tumour that propagates to different organs and/or to different sites within the same organ. Studies have indicated that the chances of survival improve upon surgical removal of metastases. The overall goal of this research was to develop a modular surgical instrument that would be easy to use and manipulate and hence facilitate resection of metastases. This research forms part of a final year project carried out by a mechanical engineering student in the four-year bachelors course at the University of Malta. The basic design cycle taught in the third year of the course was employed to systematically generate the design of a novel modular surgical instrument, This was complemented by a number of hospital visits and various meetings with professionals and other stakeholders relevant to the field. Through this case-study, this paper shows how, even at a bachelors level project, the application of design tools and the continuous communication with typical end-users can lead to the development of a high-value added product which can be potentially commercialised. Other benefits of joint supervision are also discussed.peer-reviewe

A profile-driven sketching interface for pen-and-paper sketches

This research is funded by the University of Malta under the research grant R30 31330 and is part of the project Innovative ‘Early Design’ Product Prototyping (InPro).Sketching interface tools are developed to allow designers to benefit from the powerful computational tools avail- able in computer aided design systems. However, despite the number of sketching tools such as PDAs and Tablet PCs available on market, designers typically create a number of initial conceptual ideas using paper-based sketches and scribbles such that these tools remain inaccessible to designers in the early design stages. In this paper we describe a profile-driven, paper-based sketching interface which infers the 3D geometry of objects drawn by designers using the traditional pen and paper sketching. We show that by making full use of the shape information present in the scribbled drawing, it is possible to obtain a paper-based sketching interface that retains the simplicity of the early- stage design drawings while allowing for the modeling of a variety of object shapes.peer-reviewe

A new sketch based interface using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix for perceptual simplification of paper based scribbles

The sketching activity has an important role in conceptual design and a variety of tools exist which help designers to facilitate the generation of 3D models form sketched drawings. This paper describes a new sketch-to-3D tool, which uses annotations to aid the interpretation of the drawing. Over-traced lines present in the designer’s scrib- bles provide an interpretation challenge, which must be resolved in order to obtain 3D models from these sketches. Perceptual grouping techniques used to interpret such images require that the drawing is represented as vectors. These are generally obtained through thinning or edge detection. However, we show that processing scribbles using these techniques result in a large number of vectors which do not provide a faithful representation of the drawing. This paper investigates the use of the co-occurrence matrix to perceptually simplify these drawings, thus obtaining a smaller number of vectors which describe the drawing more faithfully.peer-reviewe

Adaptation of Brensen's thresholding algorithm for sketched line drawings

Image binarisation is one of the first image processing techniques within a sketched line drawing interpretation system. In order to achieve an automated system, it is necessary to have a single algorithm which may be used for all image types. This is difficult to obtain if the parameters required by an algorithm are set manually, however, the adaptive evaluation of parameters form image properties is a step towards this goal. This paper discusses the methods by which the parameters required for Brensen's Algorithm may be evaluated adaptively form the image properties.peer-reviewe