24 year old design student Amos Dudley felt he did not have the money to pay for clear dental braces worth $8000 so he decided to manufacture his own and he did – using 3D technology for less than $60.
In his interview with CNN recently, he said he had braces when he was in junior high, but he didn’t wear his retainer as much as he should have, and his teeth shifted.
Over time, he discovered that he wasn’t smiling as much because he wasn’t happy with the way his teeth looked.
So he decided since he couldn’t afford the high cost of clear braces, he would build his own braces.
The total cost is so low because he only had to pay for materials used to make the models of his teeth and the retainers. Even though he built his own 3D printer at home, he opted to use a high-end and more precise 3D printer at his school, New Jersey Institute of Technology.
He used NJIT’s equipment to scan and print models of his teeth, and mold non-toxic plastic around them to form the set of 12 clear braces.
Dudley determined out how far he needed to move his teeth to correct the misalignment problems. Then divided it by the maximum recommended distance a tooth should travel to determine the design for each alignment tray. Orthodontists use a similar process.
Researching the materials he needed and figuring out how teeth move was the most difficult part of Dudley’s orthodontic adventure.
The most exciting was when he finally put the first aligner in his mouth.
“It was very obvious which tooth [the tray] was putting pressure on,” he said. “I was sort of worried about accumulated error, but that wasn’t the case so that was a pretty glorious moment.”
Dudley has already gotten several requests to print braces for other people. But he doesn’t want to, and he doesn’t recommend anyone else try what he’s done either.
“I think there’s too much liability,” he said. “I’m not interested in orthodontics. It was more of a hacker project than making a business out of this.”
Source: CNN Money
