Additive Manufacturing For Ergonomic Improvement Of Knee Support Device

Mohd Ridhwan, Salamun (2013) Additive Manufacturing For Ergonomic Improvement Of Knee Support Device. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

The title for this project is about Additive Manufacturing for Ergonomic Improvement of Knee Support Device. The purpose of this project is to design a knee support device with using Reverse Engineering (RE) methods and Additive Manufacturing (AM) process. Aims of this project is to produce a knee support device with improve ergonomics and comfortably to a patient. This project focused to design a prototype of knee support device based on the geometry of patient knee and type of injury sustained. Mostly, the existing support devices for knee especially for patients that suffers from severe injuries such as bone fractures or cracks have standard size according to their age. The device can be adjusted based on the size of feet and comfort to user. However, users will feel uncomfortable if it is worn for a long time. This is due to the surface of the device does not close completely between the device surface and the foot surface. Besides that, the cost required to produce an existing knee support is quite expensive because they are require more than one process machines and materials use to develop a device. In this project, there several method had been used to done the process development of knee support device. As starting, a preliminary survey was been conducted to gained the feedback from the consumer about the existing knee support device and their requirement for new device. Mostly, the respondents were been choose for user fit concept than the standard size for knee support device. 3D CAD software such as Geomagic Studio 10 and SolidWork 2010 had been used to develop a new design for knee support device based on the data given from the scanning process by using the optical scanner device. The Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for stress analysis was be done to evaluate the strength for the new design of knee support device and to identified the critical section on the design. The prototype for knee support device was be produced using the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) machine and 3D printer machine. There are two material were been used to develop the prototype for device which ABS plastic for FDM machine material and bind powder for 3D printer machine material. The surface roughness test had been done for both material to identify their smooth level. As a result, the new design for knee support device is safe to use because the specified parameter as shown the lowest FOS found in the both design are more than one. Otherwise, if the FOS value is less than one show that the design is unsafe and need some improvement. Then, for the surface roughness test the result shows that the 3D printer product has smoother surface compare to the FDM product. As the conclusion from this project, the RE technique and AM process were understood and was applied during the development process for knee support device. The prototype for knee support device was successfully done by using the FDM machines and the both product materials had been tested to evaluate their performance. However, the actual process was selected for this project is using the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) but this machine is not available in UTeM's lab.

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