Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

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lemonbug
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Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by lemonbug »

Hi everyone-

I know this is a long shot, but I was looking through some of my old files and found a project I was working on a few years back. I am a board certified pediatric prosthetist and orthotist (no longer practicing). A few years back I was working on creating a FREE printable clubfoot orthosis, but never finished it because 1) We ended up having kids and I ran out of time, 2) I simply don't have the skills.

Infant with Clubfoot
images.jpeg
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Clubfoot is a very treatable musculoskeletal condition of no know cause. If left untreated it usually leaves kids unable to walk corrcetly and requiring a very invasive surgery that has poor results. Here is a primer on clubfoot if you are interested. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... c-20350860

Anyhow, if kids undergo treatment beginning at a few months of age until about 5 they end up almost completely fine. Your foot is a little shorter and wider than normal, but everything is basically fine. The braces looks something like these. It is just an adjustable bar that you can make wider over time and a set of shoes that clips onto the bar.
fastenPonsetiBrace_a_enIL.jpg
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denis-browne-bar-2.jpg
denis-browne-bar-2.jpg (73.19 KiB) Viewed 6024 times
The two main problems with this is that 1) children require many many sets of these braces as the grow from a few months until 5 years old. This has been a real boon for the few companies that make these braces because they need to be replaced over and over. While most children in the US are covered by their insurance or Medicaid children in developing countries can not afford these at all. We would collect used ones and take them to these countries to help out where we could.

I got as far as drafting up a bar and footplate to hold the shoes but no further.
Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 4.12.17 PM.png
Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 4.12.17 PM.png (84.74 KiB) Viewed 6024 times
If anyone is interested and thinks this is actually feasible maybe we can get together and donate a few hours here and there until we get this done. I could try and get people to donate money on one of those fundraising sites to see if we can print out prototypes to make sure the shoes scale properly from kids a few months old to about 5 years old. Once we have the final design we can just publish it for free and also provide directions on what materials would be most appropriate. The upper part of the shoe would need to be somewhat soft and flexible.

I know a group of people did this a while back for a 3D printed hand/arm prostheses with great success. I believe they even had a network of volunteers who would use their printer to print the prosthesis out for kids in need.

Anyhow, It will be a lot of work but I thought I would just throw it out there and see if anyone wants to try and make a small dent in the world's problems.

Thanks, Jeremy
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by chrisb »

A project worth supporting. Looking at your image the model seems to be almost finished. What has to be done? Could you provide detailed images of all the parts that have to be modeled?
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Kunda1
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by Kunda1 »

lemonbug wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 9:18 pm Anyhow, It will be a lot of work but I thought I would just throw it out there and see if anyone wants to try and make a small dent in the world's problems.
Just 'spitballing' here but it would be pretty cool to have a repository of FC models dedicated to solving these types of real world issues. The solution would be open source, affordable, empowering and the ability to be refined with each iteration. Similiar to what open source ecology is doing.

Perhaps identifying a list of prosthetics/body mod aids (not sure about lingo) and then setting up a Feature/ToDo list with a Roadmap. I think this would be a fantastic PR opportunity for FOSS and FC.
@lemonbug already has shown the work they did on the canine prosthetic. So that would go in to the canine section :)
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lemonbug
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by lemonbug »

Great idea Kunda1. There are some many devices I can think of that need to be developed, and there are so many things that can be done to better the world. I have some buddies that go down to Peru every year for a few weeks to fabricate prostheses for people in need. These people basically have nothing at all and anything that we can do for them makes a HUGE difference.

http://pdasperuvianpost2017.blogspot.co ... nj6ttZkPZ7
http://pdasperuvianpost2015.blogspot.com

For my project the final piece is the big piece. We need to create the shoe or boot that clips to the bar I made (with help of lots of people here). I am not an engineer but I thought it may be as simple as creating a flat flexible template piece that we end up folding upwards so that it takes the shape of the final shoe. I will have to upload the bar file I made somewhere. It is almost 10mb and too big to attach here.

What the boot will generally look like.
Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 5.48.58 PM.png
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It might be a few pieces that the end user puts together with speedy rivets or something simple. And maybe they also need to apply some sticky back Velcro to the straps fo closures. What is really important about the brace is that the feet are externally rotated 60-70 degrees like so.
denis-browne-bar-2.jpg
denis-browne-bar-2.jpg (73.19 KiB) Viewed 5904 times
I approached a bunch of manufacturers back then and not surprisingly nobody wanted to help. Luckily we have awesome products like FreeCAD and 3D printers now.

I know there is a ton of talent in this community and by pooling it together it can make a big difference to a lot of kids.Thanks for listening.
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anna
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by anna »

Hi,
Sent you PM.
Regards,
AJ
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bitacovir
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by bitacovir »

Kunda1 wrote: Wed Feb 28, 2018 12:44 am Just 'spitballing' here but it would be pretty cool to have a repository of FC models dedicated to solving these types of real world issues. The solution would be open source, affordable, empowering and the ability to be refined with each iteration. Similiar to what open source ecology is doing.
Here one example of the Open Source Solutions for people with disabilities:
https://tomglobal.atlassian.net/wiki/sp ... !spacehome

It is from TOM Community http://tomglobal.org/
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lemonbug
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by lemonbug »

Thanks for the link bitacovir. Its great that people are trying to help out.
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NormandC
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by NormandC »

lemonbug wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 9:18 pm I know a group of people did this a while back for a 3D printed hand/arm prostheses with great success. I believe they even had a network of volunteers who would use their printer to print the prosthesis out for kids in need.
You're probably thinking of the e-NABLE project. http://enablingthefuture.org/

I think they are still active. For a time I was in the G+ group which now seems dormant. They mostly focused their design work on Autodesk Fusion I believe.

Good luck with your project!
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by abdullah »

I am a very bad CAD designer. But I am considering giving it a try.

I wanted to share this link of a recent Russian patent which discusses several methods used in the prior art and advantages/disadvantages:
https://patents.google.com/patent/RU176 ... t&sort=new
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microelly2
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Re: Anyone interested in donating their time to make a clubfoot brace?

Post by microelly2 »

Meantime I work for over a year on a shoe last/shoe design module,
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20525
so lets look what we can reuse for this case.
When you want individual shoes we need information about the layout of the foot.
The layout of the shell on the foto is not to complex. It is open, so we do not have to consider non envelople subfaces.
Do you have data about the foot (scan or some measures)? So we can decide how this data material can be used.
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