Design, analysis and development of prosthetic and orthotic elements by additive manufacturing process

Abstract

According to patient needs, unique Prosthetic and Orthotic (P&O) elements are created using Additive Manufacturing (AM) without the need for part-dependent equipment. This paper presents the basic information about the element's materials, and techniques of P&O. This paper discusses the detailed procedure for designing, analyzing, and developing various P&O models. Through analysis, the result shows that the desirable values of natural frequency (3103.1 Hz), total deformation (0.00261 mm), and strain energy (0.07011 mJ) of the prosthetic foot model 1 is for carbon fiber material. Therefore, for the preparation of the foot, this material can be selected for the best performance of the prosthetic foot.

Traditionally, individual P&O devices are manufactured using plaster molds, which require multiple patient visits and take a lot of effort and time to produce. Therefore, our main attention is the process of designing and developing lightweight P&O elements quickly with a simplification of the manufacturing process. The AFO and flex foot prosthetic parts are printed using PLA material on FDM machines. The entire process takes less than 7 h, with an average hands-on time of only 10–15 min for AFO parts and about 10 h for Flex-Foot prostheses. In other words, using 3D printing to create a P&O device for a patient is significantly less time-consuming than traditional methods. In the future, it is intended to compare altered effects obtained by using various types of materials for the improvement of the P&O devices by the AM method.