Collaborative Design and Manufacturing of Prosthodontics Wire Clasp

The core idea behind the concurrent engineering is an integration of upstream and downstream activities of design/manufacturing in order to produce better products in a timely manner. Digital engineering is one of the critical approaches towards this integration, and this approaches enables the promising area of digital dentistry. Digital dentistry is defined as a dental technology or device that incorporates digital or computer-controlled tools, for example, dental CAD/CAM systems. This research focuses on the area of dental wire clasp, which has been manufactured by manual bending operation performed by the skilled dental technicians. Normally, a team of dental doctor and dental technician works collaboratively to design and manufacture the dental wire clasp. However, the accuracy of the bending operation is inconsistent and depends mainly on the expertise of the technicians. This paper describes the current situation of dental wire clasp manufacturing, reviews some of the innovative computer-aided wire bending systems, and proposes a framework of collaborative prosthodontics wire clasp design and fabrication using an idea of virtual engineering approach in digital dentistry.