Student Makes DIY Plastic Teeth Aligner for $60

Yes, you read the title correctly. A 23-year-old digital design student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) used 3D printing technology to make a set of clear braces to straighten his teeth for about $60. Conventional braces can cost up to $8000. But before you get ideas, keep reading: You might not want to try this at home.

Amos Dudley realized last year that he wasn’t smiling, “and it was because I was unhappy with my teeth,” he writes on his blog, where he has carefully chronicled his journey to “Orthoprint, or how I open sourced my face.“

The proverbial struggling student, Dudley had no disposable income, but he had access to high-quality 3D printing equipment at NJIT, where he was an undergraduate. “I took a mold of my teeth with some cheap alginate powder and a 3D printed impression tray to get a picture of what was really going on,” Dudley writes. During his research, he came across an image of a popular brand of clear braces and saw what looked like “layer striations from a 3D print.” It was the a-ha moment: “What is stopping someone [from 3D-printing] their own orthodontic aligners?’ He wondered.

Well, you need knowledge of the principles of orthodontic alignment, which Dudley was about to learn, and some pretty sophisticated equipment, much of which was available to him at school. While he had a personal 3D printer, he needed a machine with better dimensional accuracy. “NJIT has a digital fabrication lab with Stratasys Dimension 1200es,” Dudley writes. “I tested the machine and found it could give me x and y accuracy below 0.1mm, which was pretty close. Vertical print resolution didn’t matter much—the direction of movement was in x and y, not z. The same lab also has a vacuum forming machine and some NextEngine laser scanners,” adds Dudley.

He sourced a copolyester aggregate on ebay suitable for this application, made molds for his teeth, scanned the casting with a laser, made digital models of multiple aligners (each with differently placed teeth), and used a vacuum machine to make plastic aligners that fit the models. The vacuum form machine is important, Dudley said Gizmodo during an interview because 3D printing the actual aligners wouldn’t work.

“Besides being opaque and having an uncomfortable texture, [that plastic] it’s quite porous and would be very bad for oral hygiene because of bacterial growth,” Dudley said Gizmodo. Instead, he used the aforementioned copolyester. “The sale of dental supplies isn’t really strictly regulated – who wants them but dentists?” Dudley said.

After wearing the DIY aligners for 16 weeks, Dudley saw a noticeable improvement, as evidenced by the images below. However, Dudley advises against making your own aligners.

A practicing orthodontist interviewed by Gizmodo, while impressed by Dudley’s initiative and technological acumen, was “a little apprehensive that he would use them to treat himself without a professional evaluation of dental health and function.” Brent Larson, Associate Professor of Orthodontics at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry said Gizmodo“In fact, when you look at the pictures of the DIYer’s teeth, there are specific areas of tooth wear that are visible that indicate unbalanced operation and possible night grinding.”

Yes, some things are better left to the professionals. However, there is a huge gap between $60 and $8000, and you have to ask yourself if it is completely justified. Dudley, for one, is skeptical. “It’s clear that people are frustrated with the state of the orthodontic appliance industry. There is not enough competition and the prices are too high,” Dudley said BuzzFeed.