Will McKiernan Prosthetic Accessory

After hearing Professor Scott say that we should look at armor for examples and inspiration, I turned to one of my favorite movie trilogies that has a ton of armor in it, Lord of the Rings. I was inspired by the Elven Armor, namely the shoulder piece oddly enough, and reflected that in my original sketches. However, once I began modeling I realized that the sharper design I had wanted was not very practical at all, and therefore smoothed out my design. I also had sketched out a different type of foot to place on the accessory, but after listening to the people from the prosthesis lab I decided to just model one of the feet the displayed for us. It no longer looks like a piece of Elven armor, but it does look like a cool, modern accessory to wear while running or just going out.

I began my process by scanning and uploading my sketches and then trimming and scaling them correctly for my rhino file. I then placed them in my file with PictureFrame, and began draawing curves based on the sketches. Instead of doing a NetworkSrf like in class, I called a Sweep2 command to construct the outer surface of my prosthesis. At first, I was running into some bad surfaces when I did OffsetSrf because the curvature near the top was too sharp. I remodeled the top into a smoother, wider opening and those problems were solved. I used projected curves to trim the slots out of the back of the leg, as well as the opening at the bottom. I then used OffsetSrf to make it a solid. Finally, I filleted all the edges. For the foot, I drew curves from the side and top view and then trimmed the shape from a box. I mirrored the foot so that I had two sides just like its real life inspiration.

The entire main section of the accessory is made of a light, flexible plastic. The hole in the back allow it to be pried open to place over the leg component. The leg component itself is polished aluminum, a strong yet lightweight material.The foot that I constructed is carbon fiber and plastic, another extremely strong but lightweight combination of materials. I used lightweight materials because I envision this design being used for jogging or other activities, and also the lighter it is, the more comfortable it is. This design also has the ability for extreme customization as shown in my last picture.