SBIR Phase II: A Fully Automatic Rapid Prototyping System Using a Novel 3D Camera

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a fully automatic rapid prototyping (RP) system integrated with a novel rapid 3D camera. The RP system will utilize a previously developed high-speed camera, that acquires full-frame 3D images at a rate of 30 frames per second, and an ultra-precision RP machine. Phase II will combine the high-speed imaging technique and an ultra-precision droplet deposition ink jet RP technique for operation in a realistic digital dental office environment. The experimental system will acquire 3D dental images and produce dental parts in real-time with sub-millimeter features. This system is expected to break a bottleneck in many current RP applications, where acquisition of a digital 3D model cannot be made directly from arbitrarily shaped objects. Rapid dental treatment and orthodontics in digital dental offices will be early commercial applications of this RP system. A new generation of CAD/CAM dental instruments will be developed for rapid fabrication of dental implants, caps, crowns, and bridges in dentist's offices. The new RP technology is expected to revolutionize current dental practice: all procedures, from 3D measurement of teeth's profile to fabrification of perfectly fitted dental parts, could be done within half an hour at the first visit of the patient, thus saving time and costs for dentists and patients. With 350,000 dentists and 20,000 dental laboratories in the U.S. and Europe, the potential market for the 3D dental probe RP products could be quite large.