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US 7,698,014 B2Granted
Local enforcement of accuracy in fabricated models
Assignee3M Innovative Properties Company
InventorsPatrick Colm Dunne, Eric B. Paley, Micah J. Rosenbloom, Michael Patrick Girard
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Abstract
The systems and methods disclosed herein employ a combination of digital three-dimensional modeling and rapid fabrication technologies to provide pre-indexed, pre-registered, and/or precut components for articulated dental models. Dental articulators and components of dental models as described herein use a positioning key to encode positional information for components of the dental model, and/or a reference grid on mounting surfaces to enforce local accuracy of fabricated parts against a fixed reference array.
Claims9
A method comprising:
- acquiring a digital surface representation of one or more intraoral structures;
- processing the digital surface representation to obtain a three-dimensional digital model of an arch including a plurality of components, each one of the plurality of components including a positioning key to uniquely position the component in an x-y plane of a mounting surface of a dental articulator;
- and
- fabricating the three-dimensional digital model to obtain a dental model of the plurality of components, wherein the positioning key for each one of the plurality of components provides gross tactile feedback on proper alignment during assembly of the dental model onto the dental articulator.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.