Journal of Materials Science and Engineering B 1 (2011) 184-189 Formerly part of Journal of Materials Science and Engineering, ISSN

1934-8959

Design and Development of Acrylic Die for Producing Wax Pattern to Fabricate Hip Bone Joint
Sugrib Kumar Shaha, Ahsan Ali Khan and Mohammad Mohafizul Haque
Department of Manufacturing and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 50728, Malaysia Received: August 05, 2010 / Accepted: September 25, 2010 / Published: July 25, 2011. Abstract: In the present study to produce a typical hip joint, Investment casting has been selected as casting method since this process can give optimum properties of the product having complex geometry with biocompatible material. In order to perform this casting, a die or mould is needed to fabricate wax pattern, which will be used to make ceramic investment for the hip joint. Thus, this study includes the modification of design together with fabrication of a typical hip joint casting dies with acrylic. Throughout the project, modulus of casting and riser has been calculated and accommodated with the main hip joint die design. The hip-bone joint design has been generated using CATIA V5 software before it is converted into numerical control (NC) codes to machine the two acrylic slabs of the acrylic dies using Vertical Machining Center (VMC). Thus, the acrylic dies for hip bone joint are now ready for making wax pattern intended to produce ceramic investment for casting the required joint with biocompatible material. Key words: Hip bone, wax, die, acrylic.

1. Introduction
A total hip-bone replacement is a surgical procedure, whereby the diseased cartilage and bone for hip joint are surgically replaced items with artificial materials. The normal hip joint is a ball and socket joint. The socket is a cup shaped bone of the pelvis and the ball is the head of the thigh-bone (femur). Total hip-bone replacement is performed most commonly because of the progressively severe arthritis in the hip joint. The most common type of arthritis leading to total hip replacement is degenerative arthritis (osteoarthritis) of the hip joint. This type of arthritis is generally seen with aging, congenital abnormality of the hip joint, or prior trauma to the hip joint such as fracture of femoral neck. However, in the process of designing the artificial joint, not only the shape of the articulation must be considered but also the means by which the
Corresponding author: Sugrib Kumar Shaha, PG student, research fields: casting and joining, surface modification, metal matrix composite and mathematical modeling and simulation. E-mail: sugribshah_mme@yahoo.com.

prosthesis will be fixed to the bone. Currently, fixation is accomplished by either bone growing into prosthesis or with bone cement. Different shapes of implants are better adapted to bone in-growth and other shapes to cement. After the design of articulation and method of fixation are decided upon, complex and detailed blue prints are drawn from which manufacturers are able to produce the artificial joints [1, 2]. However, surgery is very often needed for proper bone healing. Recent years, solution selected for hip joint problems are: lifestyle modifications, hip resurfacing and hip replacement. Today, total hip replacement has become a common and predictable procedure since it gives pain relief and improved function [2]. Hip replacement surgery is to remove two damaged and worn parts of a hip joint (hip socket acetabulum, the ball, femoral head) and replace them with smooth and artificial implants (prosthesis) [3]. Over the past years, the hip bone joint can be made by using three manufacturing processes such as machining, forging and casting of biocompatible material.

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Machining and forging processes have some limitations to produce such complicated item, especially in terms of production cost, freedom of alloy selection, time consumption and to sustain functioning with complex properties that a hip bone joint requires [4]. However; investment casting has been selected as an appropriate casting method in the present study to produce a typical hip joint. For investment casting, a die or mould is required to produce wax pattern, which will be used to make ceramic investment for the hip joint [5]. Thus, this study includes the design and fabrication of a typical hip joint casting dies with acrylic to produce wax pattern for making the ceramic investment.

2. Experiment
The design of a typical human hip joint was first configured from previous designs [6, 7] and modified to accommodate better and wider flexibility. Throughout the project, modulus of the casting and the riser has been calculated and provided with the main hip bone joint cavity in order to avoid shrinkage porosity during solidification. These are elaborated in following sub-sections: The hip-bone joint design has been generated using CATIA V5 software before it is converted into numerical control (NC) codes for machining purpose. In this study, a transparent cast acrylic sheet purchased accordingly to the hip joint design dimensions. Both acrylic sheets were then milled for surfacing to be smooth so that the contact between the two moulds is maximum thus causing the error while casting will be minimum. By using computer numerical control (CNC) Vertical Milling Machine (VMC), two acrylic slabs with similar thickness and sizes have been then machined. The required design cavity fabricated using carbide ball head cutting tool diameter 10 mm and 4 mm. 2.1 Design of Hip-Bone Joint The design of a custom hip prosthesis can be broken up into several stages. Begin with preliminary ideas of

total hip joint replacement. Previous design taken from literature was then analyzed and improved. In this study, neck stem plate is designed without smooth surface to improve the performance of fixation by providing good bonding capability at the interfaces. Stem shapes with smooth surfaces may reduce stress concentration and cause fatigue life of the prosthesis [8]. Improvising from previous design, a notch is designed at the stem angle. Notches are designed to reduce sliding of the implant in the bone cement and fix securely [8]. Cross-section of stem is important in hip joint design. It evaluate amount of total displacement. In this study, the hip stem is designed with circle type cross section. Circle designs distribute stress evenly around the implant signified when only small change in stress found from one point to another [9]. A model of the femur of the patient is constructed using CATIA V5. In this process, using the CATIA software, the axis of stem, the geometry of the neck, the offset, the Limb Adjustable Length (LAL), the stem length and the neck length are constructed. The design is then placed on the 2D form (Fig. 3) before it was converted into 3D form (Fig. 4) without the head using Dress up Features in the software. To construct smooth and continuous surfaces, a chamfering and edge fillet tool in Boolean Operation has been used. The head of the hip joint implant was then finally added using Sphere-Wire frame tool. As final, the whole product design was combined using Solid Combine tool. 2.2 Modulus Calculation In order to determine the appropriate dimensions for riser and sprue, modulus of the casting needs to be

Fig. 1 Flow chart of project designing stages.

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Design and Development of Acrylic Die for Producing Wax Pattern to Fabricate Hip Bone Joint

Fig. 2 Nomenclatures and positions of various parts of hip-bone implantation [10].

Fig. 3 Drawing of the implant in 2D, (a) Front view, (b) Top view, (c) Side view.

Fig. 5 Value calculated implemented in the riser design.

Fig. 4 The design before and after sphere construction.

determined. Modulus of the casting was calculated by using volume of the casting divided by its surface area through which heat is dissipating. Thus, modulus of casting, V M= c (1) SAc Vc = Total volume, SAc = Total surface area. To avoid shrinkage in the casting during solidification, riser must feed the molten metal to the main casting. In order to do so, modulus of the riser must be greater than the modulus of the casting and it is usually 20% greater [11]. Thus, modulus of riser, Mr 1.2 Mc (2)

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The height of the riser is determined by substituting Eq. (1) into Eq. (2). From Eq. (2), the length (L) value obtained by using Eq. (3) as follows.
1 2 2 D (H + L) d L 3 3 (3) Mr = 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 D [(H + L) + D ] [ d (L d ) ] + d 2 2 1

Fig. 6 Flowchart of die fabrication stages.

H = height of riser, L = length, D = diameter 1 d = diameter 2.

2.3 Die Construction

The process of fabricating the die halves is derived by process flowchart shown by Fig. 6. Acrylic was chosen as a suitable material for fabricating the die halves for producing wax pattern. Acrylic is stronger than glass, making it much more impact resistant and safer. Cast acrylic rivals glass in transparency of 92% light transmission and exhibits outstanding weather ability. It also insulates better than glass and it has a great advantage, i.e., it is found to be the weight of glass and fabricated wood. Furthermore, post polishing can produce a crystal clear surface on acrylic [5]. Wax patterning is chosen as the method for pattern making. The acrylic used in the present study can withstand a temperature up to 130 oC, which is quite higher than the melting temperature of wax used in pattern making. At the same time, the acrylic slab or block with required thickness was cheaply available in the local market. Blueprint design of the hip joint created using CATIA V5 design software following the value of sprue and riser as calculated. The hip joint design is shown by Fig. 7. From the hip joint design created, NC codes generated by convert the design into G codes by using CATIA V5 software. Actual cutting/machining operations took place when two blocks of acrylic were placed horizontally under milling machine, after making sure that the both die halves had correct and equal thicknesses. Then the blocks were put under the Vertical Machining Centre (VMC) one after another to do the necessary contour and the cavity. Automatically,

Fig. 7 Dimension of the hip joint design cavity on the die.

Fig. 8 Design of the cast dies.

the CNC Vertical Milling machine controller reads the codes for cutting operation. The results of the machining process of the hip joint cast die are as Fig. 9a. After machining, polishing and finishing of the die halves had been performed by using various grades of emery paper to improve the smoothness of the surface. Fig. 9b shows the polished die halves containing the

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Design and Development of Acrylic Die for Producing Wax Pattern to Fabricate Hip Bone Joint

(a)

(b)

Fig. 9 Left and right side of Cast Acrylic Die mould, (a) Before polishing and (b) Finished die halves (1 side) after polishing.

cavity of a typical hip-bone joint/implant and is ready for wax patterning.

3. Results and Discussion

The hip joint is one kind of joints that is very important to human being, which controls the movements of daily activities of human body. Failure of hip bone joint is commonly caused by injuries, arthritis or aging factor. Currently, the total hip bone replacement operation has been done to overcome the hip bone joint problem, which is capable of improving the range of movements and gives pain relief to the patient. To fabricate a typical hip bone in investment casting process, wax patter is commonly used to prepare ceramic investment shell. So, the combination of paraffin and microcrystalline waxes with 56 oC melting temperature was used as the pattern material. This type of wax is widely used for making pattern as the combination properties, such as lower melting temperature, dimensional accuracy, better fluidity, etc. tend to complementary [5]. However, the wax was melted in Pyrex beaker and superheated up to 110 oC and poured into the acrylic die cavity. The die halves were tightly fixed by shear pins and heated up to 110 o C in an oven before pouring the wax into it. This permits slow cooling of the wax so that it maintains the fluidity to cover all the intricate details of the die cavity. The wax is solidified and hardened under room temperature for a few minutes and then die opened to take out the pattern. One of the wax pattern produced using the acrylic die halves is shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10 Wax pattern to prepare investment casting shell for hip bone.

4. Conclusions
The following conclusions can be drawn from the works of the present investigation: A typical hip-bone joint has been designed successfully using software like CATIA V5. Acrylic die halves have been developed to produce wax pattern for hip-bone joint by using VMC. Wax patterns for hip-bone joint have been successfully made for producing ceramic investment. Further experiments need to be carried out to cast the typical hip-bone joint in the ceramic investment with biocompatible material in order to perform necessary stress-strain analysis on them.

Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to the Research Management Centre (RMC) of IIUM for sanctioning the Research Fund (Grant No. EDW B0804118) to carry out the project. The authors are also indebted to the Dean, Kulliyyah of Engineering for providing the

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necessary facilities in the Kulliyyah without which, the various jobs of the present study would not be performed smoothly.

[5]

References
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ASM International Handbook Committee, Metals Handbook: Investment Casting, ASM International, 1996, pp. 253-266. [6] R.M. Charles, E.S. Joseph, G.B. Richard, Mechanical Engineering Design, Mc Graw Hill, 2004. [7] M.M. Haque, K.H. Irzal, M.A. Azdy, An Integrated approach of computer aided design, rapid prototyping and investment casting, in: Proceedings of 2nd Int. Conf. on Mechatronics, 2005, pp. 864-870. [8] S.A. Zafer, K. Oguz, K. Hasan, Static, Dynamic and Fatigue behavior of newly designed stem shapes for hip prosthesis using finite element analysis, Mater. Design 28 (2007) 1577-1583. [9] T. Anthony, G. Tarun, Hip implants VII: finite element analysis and optimization of cross sections, Mater. Design 29 (7) (2008) 1438-1446. [10] W. Petty, Prostheses for Total Hip Arthroplasty, Prentice Hall, New York, 1990, p. 25. [11] P. Beeley, Foundry Technology, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 2001.