How to Orientate Different Dental Items?
As we all know, model orientation is a key step in 3D printing. Today, we will introduce in detail the orientation strategies for various dental items during printing.
Dental Model
The most important function of a dental model is to restore the condition of the teeth in the patient's mouth, and to test whether the dental product can perfectly fit the patient's mouth. Therefore, the goal of dental model 3D printing is to ensure the accuracy of the model as much as possible, improve printing efficiency and save materials. Since using light-curing printing will leave support points on the surface of the model and affect the accuracy of the model, it is necessary to ensure that the front of the dental model, that is, the teeth surface, buccal and lingual gums, and other important positions cannot add support during orientation. A common way is to lay the model flat against the bottom, so that printing can not only avoid generating supports, but also reduce the height of the model and shorten the printing time.
Another common orientation method is to place the model slantwise or vertically. Orthodontic treatment plans require a large number of dental models, ranging from dozens to hundreds. In order to shorten the time of model prints, it is necessary to make full use of the space of the printing platform. The model can be placed at an angle or vertically to accommodate the maximum number of models, but this layout method has obvious disadvantages. First, the lingual side of the dental model will be nearly parallel to the platform. It is difficult to avoid adding support to the teeth surface unless the tilt angle is adjusted manually so that no support is needed in this area, which requires higher technical requirements and takes more time. Secondly, compared with the flat layout method, the tilted model increases the overall printing height, resulting in longer printing time. In addition, the model printed by the tilted method has obvious layer patterns, which will affect the accuracy of the dental model. Based on the above reasons, for all dental models, we do not recommend the use of tilted or vertical orientation methods, and recommend flat printing.
The automatic orientation mode of CHITUBOX Dental for dental models is to lay them flat against the bottom, which can quickly lay the model flat on the platform. In addition, the "Flatten on Platform" function in the rotation panel can also achieve the same effect, which is convenient for manually selecting the plane that needs to be laid flat against the bottom.
Surgical Guide, Jaw Pad, and Splint
The products of the surgical guide, jaw pad, and splint are all having teeth marks, which need to fit with the patient's teeth. For these models, CHITUBOX Dental's automatic orientation strategy is to make the intaglio surface ( the side of the product that is placed with the teeth) face up and avoid adding supports at the teeth marks.
However, the orientation of surgical guides is a little bit different. In addition to making the intaglio surface face up, the direction of the circular hole should be perpendicular to the platform as much as possible to avoid generating supports at the hole wall, which will affect the adaptation of the circular hole and the analogs. For surgical guides, CHITUBOX Dental's automatic orientation strategy is to make the circular hole of the guide as perpendicular to the platform as possible. If there are multiple circular holes on a guide, the position of each circular hole will be evaluated, and a compromise angle will be taken to ensure that each circular hole is as vertical as possible. In addition, there is an option of "Auto support excluding round holes" in the support settings of CHITUBOX Dental, which can automatically avoid adding support at the holes for this type of model.
Denture Base
Denture bases need to be retained by adsorbing gums and palate tissues. In order to ensure airtightness between the base and tissues, it is necessary to avoid adding supports to the intaglio surface, keeping its texture. After printing, denture bases need to go through steps such as grinding and polishing to improve wearing comfort. At present, the grinding and polishing process still requires manual processing, so it is necessary to minimize the support points during orientation to reduce the workload of subsequent manual processing. Currently, CHITUBOX Dental has not yet developed the orientation algorithm for denture base, but we suggest using the method recommended by dental expert Rick Ferguson for manual orientation, to place the base model vertically and add supports as far as possible to the edge of the base or the smooth palate surface.