DIY/In-house tools & Equipment?

[tuyere]

Haven't seen a thread for this kind of thing, so: post your own non-dental tool/equipment designs, or really anything clever you've made to solve an in-lab problem.

I have a mechanical CAD design background, so I can do a lot with our 3D printers. There's a lot of call for organizers/holders for materials, for example- the stock emax packaging is very bulky and doesn't exhibit your inventory levels well at all, so I cooked up a suite of modular emax block holders:





plus "reorder blocks", so when there's less than 5 blocks remaining the tech can just stick this in the holder, so when we do our weekly ordering you can just do a quick scan of the drawer and immediately know what we're low on:



Or: we were getting a ton of zirconia discs chipping and breaking with our current "a bunch of plastic bins" storage approach, so I made vertical racking that stops them from knocking into one another, and is sized specifically to nest within the bins we use:





As far as actual tools go, we get a lot of use out of these 'reamers' i made for cleaning the zirconia out of Roland tool magazine pockets;


Or the microscope phone adapter I use to take decent photographs of parts with milling issues without any special equipment:




But yeah, post whatever good ideas you've had, so I can... take inspiration from 'em.

 

[rkm rdt]

Iprint my own bread clips.

 

[DaveId]

I really like your Emax holders, any chance you would share that design so we could print our own? It would greatly improve on our boxes in a drawer method.

 

[zero_zero]

I have a mechanical CAD design background,

Another talent wasted...

 

[tuyere]

Another talent wasted...

I get to make use of it often enough in my "lab improver/researcher/fixer-upper" role, I got them to spring for some mechanical CAD software and everything so I can't complain. Designing a multi-station print processing bench to expand our post-processing capacity right now, gonna build it with 4040 aluminum extrusion and acrylic panels andtailor it to our equipment, so every print washer gets its own little nook sized to fit, I can integrate a passive/exhaust flow-thru drying drawer for prints directly beneath the wash units, etc. Real design-ey work.

 

[tuyere]

I really like your Emax holders, any chance you would share that design so we could print our own? It would greatly improve on our boxes in a drawer method.

Leeeeeeeemme see, I personally don't have any problem with sharing stuff like this, but it's strictly not mine so I gotta cover my Ps and Qs

 

[DigiSculpt Design Center]

Some custom articulator attachments, a jig for my medit scanner to help secure models, driver bits for random implant systems which get milled in zirconia

 

[tuyere]

Here's a design I'm very proud of: our Ortho dept asked me to make them a series of height marking gauges, just a holder for a pencil that you slide across the table to make marks at the same height on multiple parts. Sure. They also wanted a series of gauges for a couple of different heights. I could do that, sure, but... what if we could adjust the gauge height?



So good, so far-





The base of it is two identical rings with stepped helices that interlock at eight different steps, so it serves as eight gauges in one. The interlocking is very secure and self-centering so the gauge doesn't shift until you want it to. It works well enough that I've used the same geometry for a couple of other tools where you want a rock-solid height/length adjustment in part of it, and don't want to screw around with setscrews or anything like that.

 

[tuyere]

Some custom articulator attachments, a jig for my medit scanner to help secure models, driver bits for random implant systems which get milled in zirconia

View attachment 43897

Excellent stuff. I've been working on a custom articulator project on and off for ages, combining the modular pin grid of SnowRock Full with the central boss and bigger tapered pins of a Baumann Evo MS2000. Some day I might even get it past the printed prototype phase.


RE: scanner jigs, we have an in-house test crown model with a big nice metal set of die/opposing etc models we check them against. We wanted to scan the crowns so we could do mesh analyses to get better data on what's off with our milling results, but we couldn't scan the crown on all sides simultaneously, and knitting two scans together would introduce unacceptable error. So I stuck a shank on the crown and designed a scanning fixture that'll automatically orient the crown correctly for single-pass 360-degree scanning.

 

[DigiSculpt Design Center]

Here's a design I'm very proud of: our Ortho dept asked me to make them a series of height marking gauges, just a holder for a pencil that you slide across the table to make marks at the same height on multiple parts. Sure. They also wanted a series of gauges for a couple of different heights. I could do that, sure, but... what if we could adjust the gauge height?

View attachment 43894

So good, so far-

View attachment 43895

View attachment 43896

The base of it is two identical rings with stepped helices that interlock at eight different steps, so it serves as eight gauges in one. The interlocking is very secure and self-centering so the gauge doesn't shift until you want it to. It works well enough that I've used the same geometry for a couple of other tools where you want a rock-solid height/length adjustment in part of it, and don't want to screw around with setscrews or anything like that.

Really love the concept, its genius. I also used to work in mechanical engineering some time ago, a little bit of autocad background really helped me along in dental cad. I have a lot more intricate things that I wish I could post but I think it would be a conflict of interests

 

[millennium]

Here's a design I'm very proud of: our Ortho dept asked me to make them a series of height marking gauges, just a holder for a pencil that you slide across the table to make marks at the same height on multiple parts. Sure. They also wanted a series of gauges for a couple of different heights. I could do that, sure, but... what if we could adjust the gauge height?

View attachment 43894

So good, so far-

View attachment 43895

View attachment 43896

The base of it is two identical rings with stepped helices that interlock at eight different steps, so it serves as eight gauges in one. The interlocking is very secure and self-centering so the gauge doesn't shift until you want it to. It works well enough that I've used the same geometry for a couple of other tools where you want a rock-solid height/length adjustment in part of it, and don't want to screw around with setscrews or anything like that.

All your pens would have to be identical in circumference

 

[tuyere]

All your pens would have to be identical in circumference

Standardized for Muji gel-ink pens with the same 11mm barrel diameter, way ahead of you

 

[millennium]

Standardized for Muji gel-ink pens with the same 11mm barrel diameter, way ahead of you

very nice

 

[DigiSculpt Design Center]

Found a couple more, customizable caliper, 3d printer remover, custom tray adapter, driver handle, scalpel handle

 

[Deena8484]

Haven't seen a thread for this kind of thing, so: post your own non-dental tool/equipment designs, or really anything clever you've made to solve an in-lab problem.

I have a mechanical CAD design background, so I can do a lot with our 3D printers. There's a lot of call for organizers/holders for materials, for example- the stock emax packaging is very bulky and doesn't exhibit your inventory levels well at all, so I cooked up a suite of modular emax block holders:

View attachment 43885

View attachment 43886

plus "reorder blocks", so when there's less than 5 blocks remaining the tech can just stick this in the holder, so when we do our weekly ordering you can just do a quick scan of the drawer and immediately know what we're low on:
View attachment 43887


Or: we were getting a ton of zirconia discs chipping and breaking with our current "a bunch of plastic bins" storage approach, so I made vertical racking that stops them from knocking into one another, and is sized specifically to nest within the bins we use:

View attachment 43884



As far as actual tools go, we get a lot of use out of these 'reamers' i made for cleaning the zirconia out of Roland tool magazine pockets;
View attachment 43888

Or the microscope phone adapter I use to take decent photographs of parts with milling issues without any special equipment:
View attachment 43890



But yeah, post whatever good ideas you've had, so I can... take inspiration from 'em.

Would it be possible to get the stl for the zirconia disc holder?

 

[CatamountRob]

I made this handy bench top tool holder for some of my most used brushes. Feel free to pm me for instructions or additional pics.

 

[karlanm]

Very cool, here is a quick puck stacking system I came up with (STL attached). Prints with supports for bottom which break off super easily.