There could be a way for anyone to personally manufacture their own orthotics.
Orthotics, if you’re not familiar, are inserts that fit into shoes. They compensate for a variety of geometric issues in a person’s feet. Some people require these in order to walk at all, so they are quite important.
Typically, they are manufactured by hand by orthotic specialists. Feet are measured using various tools, and a chunk of rubbery plastic is carved down into the appropriate shape. More modern implementations have fancier measurements and manufacturing, but the process is similar.
The problem is that you have to see a specialist to get them made to your particular feet. You can buy generically shaped orthotics, but they don’t always work. And those specialists can charge quite a bit for those orthotics.
Orthotics 3D Printing Experiment
I read a very intriguing tale of how a 3D printer operator requiring serious levels of orthotics overcame this issue by printing the devices at home.
Reddit contributor eldoogy described how they sought a way to not pay those exorbitant fees by designing and printing their own orthotics on a home 3D printer.
The story, which I encourage you to read, tells of how the design was produced using OnShape and some basic foot measurements. The print was done on eldoogy’s handy Bambu Lab H2C, initially in PLA to verify the geometry.
PLA can’t really be used for orthotics because it is too rigid: it would snap in two the first time you flexed your foot when walking. However, it’s good enough to test the fit.
Once that was done, eldoogy printed a version in polycarbonate material with a 0.6mm nozzle, which provides some level of flexibility, but is also sufficiently rigid to perform the orthotic function.
The result was an orthotic that apparently felt identical to the custom US$300 pairs from the specialists. The 3D printed orthotic worked flawlessly for over a month of use, with no cracks or problems. Eldoogy reports that the 3D printed device felt indistinguishable from the pricey commercial version.
Printing Your Own Orthotics?
It’s a great story, but this led me to a thought: could anyone do this?
With the appropriate equipment (a 3D printer capable of printing PC) and some material (PC), and a design, it could certainly be done. While the first two simply require some cash, the design is the real barrier.
Most people in the general public are not going to be familiar with the idea of using a 3D CAD tool to make a custom orthotic design to match some measurements.
However, orthotic designs are really the same 3D model, just with a few dimensional tweaks. It seems to me that it would be relatively straightforward to produce a web tool that would ask for a few measurements and then apply them to a base 3D model. Voilà, you’re suddenly downloading a custom orthotic design for immediate 3D printing.
This process would be simple enough that I could easily see this as a popular open-source project. In fact, it would be in the interest of several 3D printer manufacturers to produce something like this for public use: it would absolutely drive sales of 3D printers to people that otherwise would not consider buying.
Are you listening to this, Prusa Research, Creality, Anycubic, Elegoo, and all the others?
Via Reddit
