He is the person who is disliked by dentists. His name is Amos Dudley. He is a 3-D artist and a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Why do dentists hate him and no Dudley dislikes them, as usual patient? He has done the dentist’s work perfectly without any medical education and certificate. Dudley corrected his teeth having 3D printed his own Invisalign braces.
When Amos Dudley was a child he had already had orthodontic aligners. But one day he lost them and the problem with disarrayed teeth came back to him. When he became a student he decided to solve the teeth problem once for all. Being the student of the Technological Institute he dared to investigate the process of 3D printing braces by himself.
“Cost was a factor in the sense that I didn’t want to pay for braces again,” Dudley said. “The idea of spending thousands again just to fix something I had screwed up seemed perverse. The idea that I could do it myself, immediately, for virtually free, was the main motivator.”
Having researched the topic, firstly, Dudley made a mold of his teeth using alginate powder. Then he filled it with PermaStone, which produced a casting. After scanning the casting he printed the different models of the future braces using a 3-D printer. Next, he created plastic aligners that fit the models using vacuum form machine. The researcher emphasized that the vacuum machine was essential in the process because 3-D printing actual aligners wouldn’t work without it. Finally, the plastic was manually trimmed away and the edges are smoothed, to create a non-irritating aligner.
Amos Dudley showed the result of the aligners work after 16 weeks of wearing. The result is incredible!
Although the researcher is happy about such a result, he warns that plastic aligners are suitable not for all people. He did a hard work at all the stages of making process from researching stage to accurate 3D printing of the aligners. If somebody wants to follow him, he should take in consideration a great deal of nuances to be a success like Amos Dudley.
Source: https://amosdudley.com/weblog/Ortho
https://gizmodo.com/3d-printing-your-own-braces-works-is-a-terrible-idea-1765059128