A NEW METHOD OF TOOTH ARRANGEMENT IN ROBOTIC MANUFACTURING SYSTEM OF COMPLETE DENTURES

摘要

The successful application of robot in surgery and other medical fields reminds us that robots can play an important role in oral restoration also. The traditional way of complete denture manufacturing is manual, and the key step of the procedure is to implant artificial teeth into a tooth pad by their proper positions and orientations. Only high-level dentists and skilled technicians can do this work well. But we believe that a robot can do this work better and more easily. The artificial teeth are very complicated in shape, and not easy to be grasped and operated accurately by a robot gripper. Aiming at improving our previous robot manufacturing system, we present a new method to performance teeth implanting. Several new components are added in the operation process, such as tooth arrangement helper, intermediate blocks, glue holding disk, etc. By this method, the robot gripper only needs to grasp and implant intermediate blocks which shapes are very simple and easy to be handled precisely. An experiment of tooth arranging for a patient is performed, and a pair of ideal teeth arch is obtained. A pair of complete dentures is manufactured according to this result finally.