Design and fabrication of custom-made dental implants

Dental implant has been attracting more and more attention due to their advantages of reliability and comfort. It is estimated that 10% of people will need dental implants in their life time. Especially, companies offer a system for customer to choice. But, no one research on custom-made dental implants. Traditional implants have their limitation and they are not better fit due to the difference of patient’s oral condition. The advantages of custom implant are accuracy fit and esthetic emergence profile. So, custom-made implant is desirable. Another key problem of custom-made dental implant is manufacturing. Dental implant is difficult to machine due to its complex features and its material (titanium). With the ever increasing demand for tight tolerance and increased complexity and accuracy, traditional machine tools have become ineffective for machining them. So, we design and built a PC-based CNC Turn-Mill-Hob professional machining center for machining our custom-made dental implants accurately and efficiently. This paper introduces our method: firstly, the custom-made dental implant in various oral conditions is designed by using our implant database. And then, FEA results indicate the stress distribution and magnitude of implant-bone interface for dentist referring. Finally, samples are automatic machined by our machining center.