3D scanning is a critical part of this whole effort. With it, companies like Fight-Bite no longer have to go through the time consuming and messy mold making process required by mouth guards and other products. The customization angle is huge--that's why this has traditionally been a manual, one-off development process.
Beth is correct. The current manual process is tedious, messy and time-consuming. This is a natural application for 3D scanning and digital processing.
I'm waiting with bated breath for this to come to dentists for mouth-guards. Two weeks, the standard time for making them from molds, is much too long if you're having trouble sleeping due to snoring or teeth grinding.
I agree, NadineJ. The traditional method for making a mountguard was to bite into a a mouthguard filled with a soft gel, then let it harden overnight. Could this be much better?
Chuck, the type you mention is pretty old, just past the ones you heat in boiling water and bite into. The next stage, which comes before the one described in this article, is what I've got. I bite into some truly disgusting gloppy pink stuff in a form and almost choke on it for a minute or two while it's hardening--but that's only the mold. Then I wait two weeks while a lab does I don't know what--twiddle their thumbs?--and then I get the clear plastic, looking just like the one in the photo to this story. The one described here would be a lot better than what I've got for the speed alone, and much better than the earlier-stage ones (I've used them, too).
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
The legacy endpoint devices that control our critical infrastructure (utility systems, water treatment plants, military networks, industrial control systems, etc.) are some of the most vulnerable devices on the Internet.
In a switched-capacitor filter, capacitors and switches take the place of resistors and accurately reproduce the characteristics of continuous-time Bessel, Butterworth, and elliptical filters.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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