A student prints his dental appliance in 3D

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A student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology created his own plastic dental appliance, using a 3D printer, $ 60 of materials, and a healthy dose of ingenuity. And it works !

Dudley Amos can smile. The digital design student has been wearing dental braces for sixteen weeks now, which he designed himself to straighten his upper teeth.

"But I'm still wearing the last one!" He told CNN. “The last” is a reference to the twelfth and last dental appliance to date for its orthodontic treatment. Dudley said he wore a device while in high school, but not as seriously as he should have. Result: his teeth have shifted. Dudley then realized that he was not smiling as much as he used to, becoming complexed by the appearance of his teeth.

Well-known branded dental services can be very expensive and can be as high as $ 8,000 in the United States. The 24-year-old couldn't afford it, so he found a way to build his own device for less than $ 60.

The low total cost is explained by the fact that Dudley only had to pay materials used to model dentures. Although he had already built his own 3D printer at health home, the student preferred to opt for a more high-tech and precise version at his school, the “New Jersey Institute of Technology".

A custom dental appliance

He used the technological equipment of his school to digitize and print a model of his teeth, as well as a non-toxic plastic mold around it to form the set of 12 separate rings.

Dudley determined how much he needed to straighten his teeth to align them, and then divide that gap by the maximum distance recommended to define the design of each alignment ring. It is a procedure that many orthodontists use.

The most difficult part of the young student's dental adventure was to research the necessary materials and understand how his teeth were moving. The most exciting part, however, was undoubtedly when he wore his braces for the first time.

It was easy to see which teeth were under pressure. I was a little worried about accumulating mistakes, but that was not the case, so it was a pretty glorious moment!

The medical and industrial use of 3D printing has been widely advertised as the next technological revolution, but the general public has not found as many ways to use them as manufacturers would like. Stories like Dudley's, however, could do a good job of illustrating how easy it might be for people in the future to create what they need rather than buy them.

Dudley has already been asked several times to print braces for other people. But he doesn’t want to, and he doesn’t advise people to try to do what he has done.

I think there are too many responsibilities. I'm not interested in orthodontics. It was more of a pirate project than an attempt to start a business.

Dental hygiene has already succumbed to the wave of connectivity that now affects all fields, medical, and others, and it is obvious that 3D printing will facilitate progress.

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