/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>801700
What's that?

>>801601
Just to be clear, I'm not 3d printing the orthodontics. I'm vacuum forming them over 3d printed molds.

>>801580
I already had braces. My teeth drifted, but not much. The fact that my teeth have drifted causing malocclusion, because I can't close my mouth how it naturally wants to.

This is the mold I 3d scanned. I used alginate and permastone to make the cast and mold.

This is the first vacuum forming attempt. It's not a close fit, because the retainer material cooled too much before I applied the vacuum.

This is the 3d printed positive. The ABS used here melts at about 230C, so I'm not worried about it deforming during the vacuum process.

Another pic of the final Aligner 0.

I'm back, with new pictures! For those of you who haven't been watching these threads, I'm making orthodontic aligners ("invisalign-style") at home with 3d scanning, printing, and vacuum forming.

This is the first retainer. It's actually "aligner 0". It fits my current mouth position. It fits!!!! This is a breakthrough success.

It took two tries to get the vacuum forming working correctly. The vacuum machine is good, but the plastic cools too much before the vacuum is applied. So, I used a heat gun to apply a little heat to the positive while the vacuum pump was on.

Pic related, it's the aligner. As I mentioned, it fits. It's a VERY good fit, it's actually kinda challenging to get it off because it conforms to my teeth so closely. Striations from the 3d printing are visible if you look closely, but invisible from afar. It really is quite invisible. It's hard to tell I'm wearing it unless you look closely, where you'd notice my teeth are too shiny.

I used a rotary tool to buff down the edges so they don't irritate my gums.

I'll be printing the rest of the aligner positives soon. The current plan is to change aligners every two weeks.

I'm going to take a new scan of my teeth once I'm three aligners into the process, to update the computer model.

>>794913
Cost of Invisalign would be between 3 and 5 grand. This is going to cost me about 100 bucks total.

All tooth movement is treated as a tilting rotation about an axis a few mm below the visible enamel. This will hopefully approximate the real tipping axis of a tooth.

Some other info:

In order to map realistic movement I needed there to be no collisions between teeth, and this required 5 teeth to be motile: C-r, LI-r, CI-r, LI-l, and C-l. C-r tilts out slightly to make room for LI-r to tilt back inward. LI-l and C-l tilt out to make room for CI-r to tilt out. CI-r is tricky, because it has moved laterally a bit behind CI-l, so it's going to need to move to the left first on it's path to tilt outward. The rest of the teeth are stationary, and will be held in their current positions by the aligner/retainer.

Comparison between current position model and current position print.

It seems to be dimensionally accurate to about .05mm. It's challenging to measure organic shapes, but I included two prominent reference points. Tooth movement should be on the order of .30mm/week, so I think this is within acceptable tolerances.

Some progress, finally. Sorry about the delay, I've been swamped at school.

I'm in the final steps of production. I was struggling to find a 3D printer with good enough resolution for my purposes on the cheap. My MendelMax wasn't accurate enough, nor was the Makerbot Replicator. I've found a Stratasys Dimension 1200ES that I can use, which is finally accurate enough. The vertical (layer) resolution isn't ideal (only about .001inches), but the horizontal XY resolution significantly more accurate. Since the tooth movement is on the XY plane, I'm not worried about relatively low vertical resolution.

I've printed the first 3 retainer steps + a "current position" step (which will be used to test accuracy with my current mouth configuration). I expect to have to rescan/readjust the model as the orthodontic movement progresses, to make sure everything is accurate to the real state of my teeth.

I'm currently waiting on an order of retainer plastic (this stuff):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/KEYSTONE-PROFORM-030-RETAINER-MATERIAL-STIFF-CLEAR-5-X-5-SHEETS-BOX-50-/171572632353

which I'll use for the vacuum forming. I've already secured access to a vacuum forming machine.

Pictures incoming.

>>776412
>>776249
These are me, I evidently forgot to put on my trip.

>>775910
That small tooth (well, actually the central incisor that's pushed in) prevents my jaw from closing in the way it naturally wants to. It forces my jaw backwards several millimeters, which has caused mild temporo-mandibular joint disorder. My jaw clicks because of it. Also, that tooth rubs against my lip and gives me friction sores.

I feel that having a smile you're a happy this is extremely important. Smiling literally makes you happy.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smile-it-could-make-you-happier/

I noticed I dont smile as often or as freely as I'd like, because I'm constantly conscious of my teeth. Fuck that.

>>774935
http://www.keystoneindustries.com/en/thermal_plastics/crown_bridge_material.html

This stuff.

>>774685
Thanks for the reply. I'm not gluing anything to my teeth, nor am I using any wires or anything other than vacuum formed plastic. I actually had braces in the past, but I didn't wear the retainer they gave me. I can't afford to get them again, so this is why I'm undertaking this project (also because I had braces before, the teeth aren't terribly fucked up, only a little bit), which makes it more feasible.

Good note about the cold, I hadn't considered that.

>>774141
Kind of. The professional process is still very involved.

They take a mold of your teeth, and then use a kind of high-resolution destructive scanning (the machine shaves fine layers off the mold and then scans the surface). This generates a computer model of your teeth, and then the dentist uses some proprietary software to map out tooth movement. Then this is 3d printed in high detail, and the retainer is vacuum formed.

I'm doing roughly a similar process, except my tools are shittier. I don't have a super high accuracy destructive 3d scanner, so I have to make to with laser scanning.

The accuracy will hopefully still be good enough. The laser scanner I'm using claims 0.005" accuracy, and so far it seems to be true. The 3d printing step will have about the same accuracy, but as long as the total eccentricity isn't outrageous it should be fine, considering tooth movement is happening on the order of 0.01 inch.

>>774604
I'll post it to a wordpress blog when the experiment is complete.

>>774029
At my university.

>>774096
I'm keeping this anonymous and on 4chan for now, until I succeed. I dont want it linked to my identity for insurance reasons.

After months of delay, I've finally made some serious progress.

All the infrastructure is in place to start making the retainers.

Some notes:

-Vmax for tooth movement = .29mm/wk, so I'm going to be moving at half this rate for safety.
-every two weeks I will move to a new retainer. I will also check the integrity and accuracy of the retainer against a new Permastone mold of my teeth.

Next steps:

-Modify scan mesh to separate teeth into movable geometry.
-Print retainer positives, and vacuum form the first retainer.

Pic related is the laser-scanned result, compared to an permastone-casted alginate mold of my teeth.

>>745344
I already have a 3d printer, and free access to a vacuum forming machine.

The 3d scanner is my current stumbling block, I'm having trouble getting really good scan accuracy with my jury-rigged laser scanner. I need to find a decent camera with liveview capabilities. My shitty webcam just isnt doing the trick.

>>743171
Why don't you explain the mechanics of how you think this is going to happen, instead of shitposting?

My laser finally arrived. I'm very pleased with the quality of the beam, it should provide a nice scan resolution.

Setting up the laser scanner is a project in and of itself, so progress will be slow going. I'll update here when there's anything new to show.