Research On Medical Orthoses Based On Digital Key Manufacturing Technology And Reconfigurable Mold

With the development of digital manufacturing technology in the1980s, computer-aideddesign and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and reverse engineering (RE) broughtrevolutionary changes to orthoses manufacturing. Advanced digital technology in conjunction withreconfigurable mold approach, one of the currently most attractive manufacturing technology,opens up new areas of study to the digital manufacturing of human orthoses. In this thesis, thehuman leg orthosis is used as a case study. It involves data collection on human legs, developmentof reconfigurable shape-adjusting mold design for leg orthosis, post-processing and other keytechnologies.First, the main methods of orthoses manufacturing are summarized and analysed. Thereconfigurable mold technology and digital manufacturing technology is then introduced to showhow they can tackle the issues.In the human leg data acquisition and processing, laser scanning method was used forcapturing data cloud of the leg shape and merged data processing methods was used to generate theequivalent STL files.In order to meet the requirements of the overall dimensions of human leg and the anatomicalcurved surfaces, a reconfigurable mold was designed and developed. In the prototype unit, heightadjustable pins are used whereby the upper part consists of square-cross section head and the lowerpart consists of threaded shaft to control the linear movement of the pin.For orthoses manufactured from reconfigurable mold forming, the surface model of the three-dimensional scanned anatomy is used to generate a digitized reconfigurable mold model, whichadjusts the height of the pins to conform with the surface model.Shape conforming methods were studied and a shape adjustment software was developed.The output of the shape adjustment software integrates the reconfigurable mold model andautomatic G code generation to adjust the pins.In order to eliminate the effect of steps in the reconfigurable pins, it is proposed to use of CNCmachine as a subsequent process to smoothen the surface of the reconfigurable mold. This willimprove the quality of the surface of the reconfigurable mold and eventually the surface of theorthosis itself. Through the above study, the key steps in the digital manufacturing of orthoses involved dataacquisition and processing, reconfigurable mold design, height adjustment of pins for shapeconforming and milling of pin heads to obtain a smooth surface.