Research Projects

The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways National report on "Road Accidents in India – 2019" reports that 16 deaths occur on Indian roads every hour, with head injuries being the major cause of death. Custom-made titanium cranial implants are currently imported or made using additive manufacturing (AM) techniques (3D printing) at remote locations from hospitals. This process takes a minimum of 4 days to 4 weeks, depending on the severity of the cranial defect, and is expensive due to the capital cost of equipment and efforts involved. Lower- and middle-class families are mostly involved in accidents, making these implants unaffordable for them. The aim of the project is to fabricate titanium cranial implants indigenously using the incremental sheet forming (ISF) process at very low cost and lead time within a few hours of accident. The proposed ISF process uses a simple CNC milling machine to fabricate implants directly from CT/MRI scan data in the hospital itself, acting as a substitute to conventional forming or expensive AM processes. The process involves creating an appropriate toolpath based on the CT scan data of the patient and forming the implants using titanium alloy sheets in a CNC machine by feeding the toolpath data. The World Bank estimates that if road accident deaths are halved, it could add 7 to 22% to GDP per capita in countries like India. The proposed ISF technique will aid in reducing road accident deaths by making the implants at very low cost and lead time.