Direct manufacturing of customized crowns and fixed bridge by selectivelaser melting

To evaluate the feasibility of designing and fabricating crowns and fixed bridge by means of the digital reverse engineering and selective laser melting rapid prototyping technology, an optical scanning system, Laserdenta was used to measure the dental cast and reconstruct its three-dimension digital profile. The shape of crowns and fixed bridge was designed by computer based on the digital dental cast. By using the Dimetal-280 selective laser melting rapid prototyping system, the crowns and fixed bridge of 316L stainless steel was made through orthogonal experiments for parameter optimization. The results show that the crowns and fixed bridge of 316L stainless steel have good surface quality, high accuracy of ±0.15mm in dimension, good roughness of about 20μm. The technology of reverse engineering and direct manufacturing of complex customized metallic crowns and fixed bridge by selective laser melting shows obvious superiority with high speed, precise profile and good accuracy in size comparing with the traditional one so as to offer some evidence for its application in CAD/CAM of oral prosthesis.