Manufacturing of a functional prototype of dental bracket

The objective was to validate the design of novel dental brackets by manufacturing a short series (10 units) in 316-L Stainless steel.

The difficulties of making these parts were mainly due to its high geometric complexity (the underside of the base is microtextured to promote adhesion to the tooth, the piece has no more than 2 mm square and manufacturing tolerances were very rigorous, to ensure a proper assembly of constituent parts) and to the unviability of traditional manufacturing technologies (machining, injection molding...), as they are designed for very large volumes of manufacture.
The in-depth knowledge of PRODINTEC technicians on the micromachining process and choosing the most suitable machining strategies made possible to successfully manufacture the parts in a time of 60 minutes each. Milling tools of 0.1, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.05 mm diameter were used, the latter necessary for microtexturing the underside of the bracket.
The manufacture of these parts allowed our customer to advance in his own development of a new system of dental correction and rectify certain weaknesses identified during the assembly operation on a replica of human teeth.