3d printed "wrought wire" clasps for acrylic RPD's

Denturepropgh

Denturepropgh

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Do you know of anyone who has attempted to 3d print clasps instead of bending them? I know a little bit about metal filament 3d printing, but do you think the clasps would be able to be printed with the same properties as wrought wire provides? Just thinking from a labor-saving, consistency perspective. Wire bending is not my favorite task, and I think that I can speak for many technicians. Might take me 10 minutes to bend a single wrought wire clasp, but if you get a case needing 7 clasps, I got over an hour in just bending clasps. And that's being generous!
 
zero_zero

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I have yet too see a material strong enough to be used as a clasp, perhaps is possible with high end machines like an Eos and such ?
 
CoolHandLuke

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printed metal has different elastic qualities than cast metal or milled metal. this is partly due to 3 factors: 1, the alloy composition, 2, the fusing temperature, 3, the subsequent treatments such as annealing included in the process of your product manufacturer.

printed metal can suffer slightly, when it comes to workpiece hardening or embrittlement. because its millions of dots welded together it may already have suffered warps due to the fusing process. unwarping or bending can therefore be problematic as the metal has become brittled by the slow process.

i'd still recommend milling instead of printed metals.
 
Sda36

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What about KeySplint Soft, think I would like to try. On myself 1st but think properties may be there. No idea as to life span, unknown...
 
JKraver

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In the future probably, more likely they will find some plastic material that will replace wrought wire.
 
JMN

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We already mill them from pucks of acetyl when making frames or fully milled rpds.

Printing is going to be different and a few material generations away because of porosity for both strength and stain resistance.

Plus we need something that will have heat re/de-forming resistance(coffee/hot tea),significant shape memory, and flexural resiliency for about 14,000 flex cycles to get it to around 10 years (in and out 2x day for 1 year about 1400 flexes)

Also need to get a good way to keep them in the rpd as wire can get into really tiny spaces without losing strength that would be easy shear thickness for current print and injected(claspeze, flexite) material generations.
 
JKraver

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We already mill them from pucks of acetyl when making frames or fully milled rpds.

Printing is going to be different and a few material generations away because of porosity for both strength and stain resistance.

Plus we need something that will have heat re/de-forming resistance(coffee/hot tea),significant shape memory, and flexural resiliency for about 14,000 flex cycles to get it to around 10 years (in and out 2x day for 1 year about 1400 flexes)

Also need to get a good way to keep them in the rpd as wire can get into really tiny spaces without losing strength that would be easy shear thickness for current print and injected(claspeze, flexite) material generations.
I personally don't think there is a much better option than a WW clasp for these appliances. It is hard to beat the durability/size ratio I also really dislike covering 3/4ths of a tooth to get retention.
 
Nathan Ardelean

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What size (diameter) ww do you all use for clasps?
 
John in Canada

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I’ll check into it. My cousin, an orthodontist in central Florida was telling me about this several years ago. He was helping to write programs to do it as I recall. Haven’t seen him in several years now, but it’ll be interesting to check into.
 
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