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The objective of this project is to investigate potential designs of cutting teeth for hip broaches, specific for additive manufacturing, that improve on the as-built sharpness and overall cutting performance by proposing potential solutions, determining appropriate means of screening concepts, and selecting a final concept and assessing its performance.
Sponsor
Stryker
Team Members
Emily Boll Vanessa Dale Noah Heimbaugh Emily Kehler Nick Zhang
Project Poster
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Project Video
Project Summary
Overview
Stryker is a medical technology corporation that offers innovative products and services in orthopedics, medical and surgical, and neurotechnology and spine that help improve patient and hospital outcomes. Stryker has numerous hip broaches on the market that are traditionally manufactured. However, additive manufacturing is growing in prevalence in the medical industry for its advantages over conventional methods. Our task was to investigate the potential to additively manufacture hip broaches by examining various teeth geometries and their cutting-edge ability.
Objectives
Our team’s objective was to investigate potential cutting teeth designs for hip broaches utilizing additive manufacturing to improve upon the as-built sharpness and cutting performance which can be assessed using a testing protocol.
Approach
– Researched relevant hip broach patents and existing teeth geometries
– Performed concept generation and selection for test set-up and various teeth geometries for coupons
– Visited Stryker to learn more about company, manufacturing, 3-D metal printing facility, and hip replacement procedure and received various materials and samples for testing
– Created models in SolidWorks for the test set-up and coupons with different teeth geometries
– Constructed the test set-up using various materials in the classroom
– 3-D printed coupons in both plastic and cobalt chrome
– Used the test set-up to perform various tests on the cobalt chrome printed coupons on sawbones
– Generated results from impulse test set-up and by-hand testing
– Analyzed graphs by plotting the mass loss of sawbone after running tests for the various coupons to compare the most efficient cutting edge
Outcomes
– The Accolade, Compaction, Diamond, and Swirl 3-D printed coupons were more efficient and performed better than the machined coupon
– Additive manufacturing is shown to produce a sharp tooth edge and a rough surface, resulting in more material removed