Fabrication of Personalized Prosthetic Liner by Using Fused Deposition Modeling

Prosthetic liner is an interface between the prosthesis and the residual limb which is used by a lower limb amputee. The purpose of the prosthetic liner is to provide comfort and protect the stump from direct contact with the socket. A personalized prosthetic liner would be a better idea for lower limb amputee in the future prospectively. This can be actualized by the additive manufacturing which holds a great potential to improve the quality of the lower limb prosthetic. This paper presents the process of fabricating personalized prosthetic liner with thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) filament by using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printing. The research highlighted the capability of 3D scanning to capture a precise 3D model of the stump and the capability of FDM 3D printing to manufacture prosthetic liner with elastic filament. Most of the successful full-scale prototypes were printed by the parameter of 15 % infill density and 235 °C – 240 °C extrude temperature. The 3D printing process took an average of 44 hours estimated time for each experiment. Whilst this paper has presented a new method to make a personalized prosthetic liner, the research has a great potential in the improvement of the prosthetic device.