November 19, 2015

Today I visited Tech Shop and completed the Vacuum Former SBU (received a safety and usage packet, but some notes can be found below).  I molded my shoe to closely resemble the type of work we will be doing for our project. The first time, I placed my shoe in sideways and there was no support,  so it folded over on itself. However, the mold of the bottom worked well. The second time, I decided to place the shoe so that the bottom was facing up. We used "hockey pucks" to stabilize the show so that it would not roll over. Because of the flexibility of my shoe, it again deformed after the use of the vacuum, but the hockey pucks cause the toe area of the shoe to be sticking up which is what actually needs to occur for the patients who have drop foot (their toes need to be up). When we actually are designing our brace, we will be using a solid mold, the 3D printed scanned model, so this machine will actually work very well for our design.

Thermo plastic

Scan or mold --> 3D print 

Have the back of leg part come in particular sizes 

Bottom of foot will be more custom 

Different slices of the mold of their foot on one sheet 

- Naomi