College Student Makes His Own Braces

Reaver

Reaver

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This college student used a 3D printer to make his own Invisalign braces.

http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Ortho

FYI, these braces cost about $8,000 in the states, but he made his own for $60.

I imagine Invisalign and other manufacturers of "invisible braces" are not happy about this. One of the comments said that his process is actually very similar to how they make braces. They're just marked up severely. Nice to know.

I hope it shakes up some things. I love to see people who just throw monkey wrenches in industries and then walk off. It's kind of funny.
 
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It would be interesting to see how this could be done on a mass scale to help alot of people. Could a dentist with a 3D printer make it for their patients or would they be violating some kind of patent that invisalign holds?
 
Capo Dei Capi said:
It would be interesting to see how this could be done on a mass scale to help alot of people. Could a dentist with a 3D printer make it for their patients or would they be violating some kind of patent that invisalign holds?
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Well my theory is it should cut down on costs significantly, especially if you can have your braces printed up at the place you got your teeth checked. No outsourcing. It might take a while but it should bring them down to at least under a thousand dollars. Dental care should be affordable for everyone. It's just as important as health care. :| Unfortunately there's an entire industry that doesn't believe that.

Also, another thing is that Invisalign isn't the only maker of invisible braces. They're just the most well known. So I doubt they'd be violating a patent.
 
alwaysinvisible said:
Dental care should be affordable for everyone. It's just as important as health care.
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Dental care is part of health care in most societies, isn't it?

I like that this could make it affordable for many that do not have the opportunities that are available to others although I'd be a little concerned about using a printer that you can pick up at Office Depot to make something to properly align your teeth.

Perhaps it will make the process something that the professionals can offer en mass as opposed to it being only a segment of dental professionals that specialize and can charge through the wazoo.
 
3d printing is going to really change the world. Once they're super cheap there's going to be a manufacturing revolution. Good luck with gun control though, that's pretty scary!
 
Is he a dentist himself ?

What if his braces suck :S

wait, but how is he going to mount into his teeth.
 
like the friend said earlier, he only needed $5000+ of software and a $10,000 3D printer to make it happen
 
Ste Fishkin said:
that's a cool as fuck piece of engineering, but sure they cost $60...... he only needed $5000+ of software and a $10,000 3D printer to make it happen.
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He used the 3D printer at his college to make them. He just needed $60 for the parts. That's why I said it only cost him $60. That 3D printing was free for him because he was a college student. :)
 
Ignoring the inflated price problem due to your countries 3rd world health care.....

If they could be made cheaper, they would. I would have thought vacuum forming them over the plaster tooth model would be a much lower tech, quicker and more like a commercial product...

If you are paying these people $100 an hour to work (and they are health care people, they should be paid well) and you are now asking them to learn 3D printing and all this other stuff, you're going to put the price up.

Stories like this do my fucking head in, it's just not true... this is ignoring the fact he feels he knows more about how to model the braces to bend his teeth correctly, which I doubt he does.

As a project and piece of engineering, genius. Real world applications, no.
 
Ste Fishkin said:
Ignoring the inflated price problem due to your countries 3rd world health care.....

If they could be made cheaper, they would. I would have thought vacuum forming them over the plaster tooth model would be a much lower tech, quicker and more like a commercial product...

If you are paying these people $100 an hour to work (and they are health care people, they should be paid well) and you are now asking them to learn 3D printing and all this other stuff, you're going to put the price up.

Stories like this do my fucking head in, it's just not true... this is ignoring the fact he feels he knows more about how to model the braces to bend his teeth correctly, which I doubt he does.

As a project and piece of engineering, genius. Real world applications, no.
Click to expand...

Even if the 3D printer becomes cheaper, a person would still have to learn how to use it, and how to model the braces. It would be easier and cheaper to get dental insurance that covers braces and go to a dentist.

The only way to really cut the cost is if some automated modeling software was created but that is years away.
 
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