Development of a computer-aided engineering–supported process for the manufacturing of customized orthopaedic devices by three-dimensional printing onto textile surfaces

Today, additive manufacturing, also called three-dimensional printing, is used for producing prototypes as well as other products for various industrial sectors. Although this technology is already well established in the automotive, aviation and space travel, building, dental and medical sectors, its integration in the textile and ready-made industry is still in progress. At present, there is a lack of specific application scenarios for the combination of three-dimensional printing and textile materials, apart from fashion and shoe design. Hence, this article presents a digital computer-aided engineering–supported process to manufacture customized orthopaedic devices by three-dimensional printing directly onto a textile fabric. State-of-the-art fabrication methods for orthoses are typically labour intensive. The combination of three-dimensional scanning, computer-aided design modelling and three-dimensional printing onto textile materials open up new possibilities for producing custom-made products. After three-dimensional scanning of a patient’s individual body shape, the surface is prepared for constructing the textile pattern cuts by reverse engineering. The transformation of the designed three-dimensional patterns into two-dimensional is software supported. Additional positioning lines in accordance with specific body measurements are transferred onto the two-dimensional pattern cuts, which are then used as the basis for the design of the three-dimensional printed functional elements. Subsequently, the design is saved in STL (Standard Triangulation/Tessellation Language) file format, prepared by slicing and directly printed onto textile pattern cuts by means of fused deposition modelling. The last manufacturing step involves the assembly of the textile fabric. The proposed process is demonstrated by an example application scenario, thus proving its potential for industrial use in the textile and ready-made industry.