During and outside of class we have worked on designing three new prototypes. The first was a PLA printed supported insole with heel and toe supports to help with alignment. The second was without the toe support, put still printed in PLA. For the third, we printed an insole with a more supportive heel plate and printed in a more flexible plastic.
However, we have had some issues using meshmixer to design our prototypes in the way that we want. After making the insole base in Meshmixer, we bring it into Tinkercad to add the support on the heel and toe. Before adding the support though, we have to align the orthotic in the way that Professor Munoz showed us. After this though, once we add the rectangles to make the heel and toe support, there is extra material and we have to cut it out. To to this we have to bring the original foot scan into Tinkercad and use it as a hole on top of the orthotic. This is an issue because there is not a way to align it exactly like we aligned the insole before we added the supports.
To fix this issue we have decided to try adding the supports to the original foot scan first, then making it an insole in Meshmixer. Next we are going to keep experimenting with more plastics, and hopefully gain access to a machine that will test the strength and durability for us at TechShop.
February 7 2016
After meeting with Professor Santiago Munoz from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, we decided to move in another direction with the 3d printed orthotics. We are going to work on adding supports to the toe and the heel. The heel and toe supports under the orthotics are to realign the foot. One of the thing we learned in our meeting was that a lot of making orthotics is in realigning the foot, not just adding supports in certain places.
We are working on modifying our previous printed prototype in Tinkercad to create a prototype similar to the QuadraStep orthotics lent to us by Professor Munoz (See Images and Visuals 10). Once we get a design that we like, we will print in using different materials to test for strength/durability/strength. We will also work on printing the design in multiple materials in order to create an orthotic that has different plastic qualities in different areas (Ex. Rigid in the heel support, more flexible where the foot sits. Our design will differ from the QuadraStep insoles because our design would be custom fitted to the patient's foot.
Just because we have more work in the 3d printed insole design, we are not abandoning the idea of a vacuum formed insole. Professor Munoz has provided us with more resources on materials used in vacuum forming orthotics. In the future, we might work to combine 3d printed and vacuum formed parts to make our orthotic insole.
January 19 2016
After testing the vacuum former on one of the PLA foot prints and printed prototype (images and visuals 4) it is clear that the vacuum former works better on the full foot print. But, there was the issue of the PLA having a too low melting point.
We experimented with printing in ABS (a plastic with a higher melting point) and got a print of the foot scan good enough to vacuum form on. (Images and Visuals 5) When we put it in the vacuum former, we realized that it was too wide for the clamp we used, so we had to us a dremel tool to sand down the edges to fit (Images and Visuals 6).
We got three forms from the visit to Tech shop, two of which were successful. Using a soldering iron we separated the orthotic shape from the full plastic mold. (See Data and Images and Visuals 7 and 8 for more) What we have to do next is find a quick way to sand down the plastic edges and experiment with different types and thicknesses of plastics. Also we really really need a city as our campus mentor who specializes in foot orthotics because at this point we are not sure if what we are doing is medically accurate.
New ideas : Fitness tracker in insole, much more flexible plastics, forming plastics on top of each other for a flexible/rigid part
Dec. 1 2015
The second prototype design was completed and printed. Using the full foot scan helped and on this design the arch support came far enough across the foot. Images and Visuals Fig.4
Next we need to meet with an orthotic specialist to help us finalize our design, We will begin to design on top of the cropped foot scan since that is what will be easiest to vacuum form. Also, it is easy to go from a foot scan to an orthotic, but not in reverse the other way around, so this will leave us with more options if we decide to go with 3d printing later.
As we work on finalizing the design we must begin to look into what plastics we can vacuum form and make orthotics out of.
Nov. 13 2015
For our first prototype past the low res one, we are working on a basic orthotic with arch support. Since we haven't had a personal city as our campus meeting, we are still missing the information of how the scan/model of the foot is edited to become the negative for an orthotic. After playing around with meshmixer for a little while, we made a first 3d printable prototype. There were many design flaws here, which was expected due to it being a first prototype. Ther arch is too high, and since it was modeled off of the cropped foot scan, it does not fit Lynne's foot correctly. Next time, we will make sure to use the full foot scans so that we will have the whole side of the foot to work with as well. After we are happy with a first prototype for Lynne's size foot (large), we will work on one using Joan's foot scan (more of a medium size).
The next step after we get our design to be the right shape is to start to research and test different plastics to see which works best (strength, flexibility, durability, etc.)
Nov. 5 2015
The first step in our process was to scan and print our feet to help us make our low res prototype.
This foot was printed unedited, and we made a very basic insole shape using paper mache and clay over the foot. Later on we will sew a fabric part to represent the flexible part of our insole.
See Images and Visuals Fig. 1
Our next step is to continue to work on our skills with modifying the scanned in foot in Meshmixer or another more organic CAD modeler. We will need to meet with an orthotic specialist in order to learn more about the specifics of insole shape.
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