The Cost Comparison of both Manufacture Rapid tooling Methods of Customized Nasal Mask Cushion

Noninvasive ventilation is the most common, reliable and the main method of treating respiratory failure patients. Some people have trouble complying, just because cannot adjust to the intrusiveness of their masks. Therefore, in this research, rapid tooling technology was utilized to develop customized nasal mask cushion. In the beginning, 3D Camera was used to capture the patient's face data. The cushion CAD design was based the face model which was digitized by the reverse-engineering technology. The rapid tooling of the cushion was then designed and manufactured by two ways, computer numerical control(CNC) techniques and rapid-prototype(RP). In the end, the skin friendly material -silicone was injected into the tooling to obtain customized cushions. The material cost, time cost and labor cost were compared. The results of the CNC techniques showed a advantage over RP. This research has proposed a approach to save production costs to manufacture customized cushion through rapid tooling.