A Turnkey manufacturing solution for customized insoles using material extrusion process

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a complete turnkey system to measure, design, and manufacture customized insoles. An optical foot measuring technology has been developed and used to detect the dimensions as well as the plantar pressure distribution of the foot pair instantly. A 3D CAD model of the insole is automatically generated followed by simple adjustments based on a certified medical professional's diagnosis. The generated pair of customized insole models are joined together by their edges to form a single piece for easy manufacturing and easily separable once fabricated. The fabrication is done by Material Extrusion (ME) process using PETG (a modified version of PET) material in a custom built machine. In this paper, it is discussed in detail about the Foot Measurement Apparatus (FMA), Design approach, and Fabrication using Additive Manufacturing (AM) process.