Digital Dental Matrix Design for Tight, Flossable Contacts
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Solution Overview
Problem
Dental practitioners face challenges in creating digital dental models with tight, flossible contacts, often requiring time-consuming manual processes with tools like blades and saws to separate interproximal contacts.
Innovation Solution
A method for designing dental restoration appliances that involves generating a digital 3D model, determining the location and orientation of interproximal geometry, refining the geometry, and using 3D printing to create a physical matrix with customized interproximal contacts, utilizing techniques like Boolean intersection and landmarking coordinate systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual tools like blades and saws are used to separate interproximal contacts, then the dental appliance can be created, but the process becomes time-consuming and uncomfortable for the patient
Solution Approach 1:
The digital model预先 calculates and positions the interproximal contact geometry before the actual appliance fabrication. By determining the optimal contact locations and orientations in the digital planning stage, the need for time-consuming manual separation with blades and saws is eliminated, directly resolving the productivity-time contradiction
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical manual separation process (blades and saws) with a digital computational approach. The system uses algorithms to automatically determine contact geometry and generates precise fabrication files, substituting manual mechanical operations with automated digital design and manufacturing processes
2Reliability
If tight interproximal contacts are formed, then the dental restoration is secure, but the contacts become difficult to separate with floss
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different geometric characteristics to different regions of the interproximal contacts. By analyzing the local anatomy and contact requirements, it creates customized contact geometry with specific thicknesses and orientations in different areas, achieving both tightness where needed and flossability where required
Solution Approach 2:
The patent modifies geometric parameters such as contact thickness, orientation, and curvature to optimize both retention and flossability. By adjusting these parameters in the digital model, the system creates contacts that are sufficiently tight for restoration security while maintaining adequate space for floss passage
3Manufacturing precision
If custom interproximal geometry is created digitally, then precision is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The complex interproximal contact geometry is divided into discrete manageable elements. The system segments the contact regions and processes each with specific geometric parameters, making the overall complex design more manageable and manufacturable while maintaining high precision
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses digital copying and replication of optimized contact geometries. Once the ideal contact geometry is determined through digital analysis, it can be precisely replicated across multiple appliances or regions, maintaining consistency and precision without requiring complex manual adjustments for each instance
Data Source
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Figure 3A~3B
AI summary
Systems and techniques for designing a digital dental matrix with improved interproximal contacts are disclosed including generating a digital three-dimensional model of a future dental anatomy of a patient, the future dental anatomy representing an intended shape of at least one tooth of the patient, selecting one or more pairs of adjacent teeth in the 3D model, for each selected pair of teeth, determining a location and orientation in the interproximal space of the adjacent teeth to insert a digital 3D geometry having one or more initial parameters, and inserting the digital 3D geometry at the determined location and orientation.