Cascade DAFO (Ferndale)

Cascade DAFO’s warehouse and distribution center in Ferndale is a repository of every orthotic mold the company has ever made.

DAFO stands for dynamic ankle-foot orthoses, and that’s what the company makes—flexible plastic braces for children with birth defects that affect musculoskeletal development. The company also makes products and sizes for adults.

Those braces had been handcrafted through a multistep process. An orthotist would make a cast of a patient’s foot, and send the hard model of the leg and foot along with directions on how the brace was supposed to change the development of the foot or ankle to Cascade DAFO. There, the cast was filled with plaster and modified to add or remove material to the mold to a form that the brace would fit. (The company gets to see the process up close, since its Ferndale manufacturing plant also has an orthotic clinic for fitting local children who need leg braces.)

Cascade DAFO, founded in 1982 in Bellingham by Don Buethorn, generally tries to finish and ship braces in four days or less. Still, the current process is time consuming.

So the company figured out a shortcut: digitize the cast form, combine that with instructions and measurements from the orthotist, then feed the data into a software program tied to a CNC multiaxis milling machine that carves out a model to which the brace can be fitted.

The result, Cascade DAFO says, is a more accurate brace produced in less time and at lower cost. Those improvements, in turn, will go a long way toward helping the company achieve its goal: “more braces for more kids.”

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