Application of Reverse Engineering and Additive Manufacturing for Prosthesis Fabrication Process Improvement

Abstract

Reverse engineering (RE) as well as Additive manufacturing (AM) are two potential technologies that have been widely used in product development. Presented in this paper is to apply both technologies to improve prosthesis fabrication that is typically skill intensive process. A case study of abelow-knee amputee was presented. Rather than making the positive mold of the stump by trial and error, a handheld 3D scanner was used to collect the shape of the amputee’s stump. The obtained point cloud data were reconstructed to be the surface model for making the positive mold by an FDM-based additive manufacturing machine. By using this approach, the socket of the prosthesis could fit with the amputee’s stump effectively but the fabrication time and cost were still issues to be further improved.