Dental appliances with shaped material components
AssigneeAlign Technology, Inc.
InventorsJun SATO, Ryan KIMURA, Yaser SHANJANI
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Dental appliances with shaped material components and methods of forming the same. Methods may include forming a shell to have one or more cavities that are configured to receive a patient's dentition. The shell may be configured to reposition one or more teeth of the patient's dentition toward a new configuration. One or more flaps of material may be folded to form a specialized feature of the dental appliance. The specialized feature may be configured to impart one or more specialized forces to one or more specific locations of the patient's dentition or dental arch.
Claims20
A method of forming a dental appliance, the method comprising:
- forming a shell to have one or more cavities that are configured to receive a patient's dentition, wherein the shell is configured to reposition one or more teeth of the patient's dentition toward a new configuration;
- and
- folding one or more flaps of material to form a specialized feature of the dental appliance, the specialized feature configured to impart one or more specialized forces to one or more specific locations of the patient's dentition or dental arch.
A dental appliance comprising:
- a shell having one or more cavities that are configured to receive a patient's dentition, wherein the shell is configured to reposition one or more teeth of the patient's dentition toward a new configuration;
- and
- a specialized feature configured to impart one or more specialized forces to one or more specific locations of the patient's dentition or dental arch, the specialized feature including one or more flaps of folded material.
A method of forming a dental appliance, the method comprising:
- forming a shell to have one or more cavities that are configured to receive a patient's dentition, wherein the shell is configured to reposition one or more teeth of the patient's dentition toward a new configuration;
- and
- folding one or more flaps of polymeric thermoformable material to form a specialized feature of the dental appliance, the specialized feature configured to impart one or more specialized forces to one or more specific locations of the patient's dentition or dental arch, wherein forming the specialized feature comprises heating, applying pressure and/or applying vacuum to the polymeric thermoformable material.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.