Design/Manufacturing System for Composite Ankle Foot Orthosis

In this study, we tried Design / Manufacturing system by using optimum design and rapid manufacturing for Composite Ankle Foot Orthosis. As a result, we found that the manufacturing process is effective on the cost and the design process has possibility to be optimum shape. There are more than one billion people who have a disability in many countries. Some of the people have foot drop and clubfoot. The disabilities become difficult for the people to gait. They use AFO for supporting their gait. However existing manufacturing methods of AFO are expensive because they contain a process to manufacture negative model for manufacturing positive model needed to forming AFO. This process reduces dimension accuracy of the positive model. The time for modification of the positive model becomes long. Our manufacturing process fabricates the positive model directly by using hand-held 3D Scanner and CAD/CAM system. Therefore negative model is not needed and the cost becomes lower. Instead of the reduced manufacturing time, we submitted optimum design with scanned AFO model on flexure and with simplified model on strength.