Artificial teeth manufacturing: inspection of mould and teeth by contactless scanning systems

The recent development of non-contact digitizing systems dedicated to dental applications has introduced innovative procedures, based on Reverse Engineering techniques, for the production of artificial teeth. Starting from the reconstructed 3D model of each tooth, first the mould CAD model is created and then the milling path is computed for machining. At the moment there is no indication of the quality of such innovative procedure, so it is investigated in this study by evaluating the deviation introduced by each manufacturing step. A machined mould for the production of acrylic molars and premolars is inspected by means of a contactless scanner and some teeth are selected as manufactured samples. Scan data of such samples allow to evaluate the deviations introduced by each operation. A comparison of two optical digitizers is based on the results of this study and economic considerations related to costs and times are also included.