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Invisalign Became the Biggest User of 3D Printers

13 points3 dayswired.com
hattmall43 minutes ago

So shouldn't this really be something that could be opened sourced. I think I've seen a few write ups of people that did their own, but seems like a highly functional implementation could be democratized.

afavour13 minutes ago

I did Invisalign a few years ago. Manufacturing the retainers is surely only a small part of the puzzle.

They used a specialized sort of 3D camera on a stick to get an incredibly accurate model of my mouth, any open source solution would need an equivalent. And you’d also need open source code from somewhere to work out which teeth need to move where and at what stage in the treatment.

Legend244027 minutes ago

Certainly it's not impossible to DIY, but it's more difficult than just popping some aligners on your 3d printer.

Manufacturing them requires a resin printer and a vacuforming setup, but that's still the easy part. It's a whole system with a dental 3D scanner, software for rearranging your mouth, and attachment points that have to be epoxied onto (and later removed from) your teeth by a dentist.

IshKebab15 minutes ago

Yeah it's also not unreasonably expensive. At least when I had them it was only a few thousand pounds. I think they do offers regularly.

lovich19 minutes ago

They have to have at least 2 different materials as well. The temporary trays were much softer and I had almost ground through them in my sleep by the time I had to switch to the next one but the final set is much more robust.