Engineering a novel anatomical foot model for anatomy education

Using 3D printing to fabricate a foot model with softness of skin" shore OO hardness, to enhance palpation skills in anatomy education. Fabrication of the foot model involved the combination of 3D printing and casting techniques. The bone structure was 3D printed on a commercial 3D polyjet printer, with rods inserted between the bones on a .STL data file to hold the bones together. A commercial Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) machine was used to fabricate the mould for silicon casting to replicate the soft tissues. Casting allowed the soft tissue replication to be transparent to facilitate visualisation of the 3D bone structure. The surface roughness (Ra) of the mould improved from 0.209 micrometre in average to 0.04602 micrometre by vapour polishing before silicon casting the soft tissue part. A functional foot model was fabricated using a combination of 3D printing and silicon casting. This model serves as a good translational tool so that students understand the functionality in clinical reasoning. Low cost fabrication of body parts will enhance anatomy education. The part fabricated is superior to older teaching resources as these models allow for visualisation of structures not visible in a normal human foot, inexpensive, scalable, and are easy to mass-produce in any part of the world. Thus functional 3D models are a viable resource to stimulate palpation skills for increased engagement and the ability to practice and revisit the information for anatomy students.