Preparation Of 3D Printing Laser Rapid Prototyping Dental Implants And Analysis On Their Mechanical Properties

Background:Denture deficiency and edentate seriously affect the health of the people.With the speedy increase of the aged population,tooth deficiency patients are more than 300 million in our country,and edentate patients are about 15 million.It is an urgent issue to provide a comfortable and safe prosthodontic treatment which can also increase masticatory efficiency.Along with the progress of science and technology,development of our social economy and the acceleration of population aging,prosthodontics and dental implants have became the main choice for people to repair their missing tooth and improve their quality of life.Compare with the traditional prosthodontic treatment,dental implantation doesn’t affect the residual teeth of the mouth,increase masticatory efficiency and is elegant,and comfortable.There are still many shortcomings of dental implant.Currently in clinical the dental implants are mostly imported,expensive,high-precision casting,and uniform size,so they are inability to meet personalization,and the precision of casting and the efficiency of bone integration need to be further improved.The implantation currently needs a secondary surgery three to six months after tooth extraction,which induces the loss of bone mass when waiting for the healing process of tooth extraction,extends treatment course,increases the pain of the patient.So how to achieve personalized and immediate tooth implantation is the future development direction.The emergence of the 3D printing technology provide the possibility to achieve personalized and immediate tooth implantation,along with the development of computer science,materials science,and precisive mechanical technology.This technology has always been considered to be the core of the technique which promote the third industrial revolution and also has become a hot research topic in the field of biomedical,aerospace,and materials,whose character is digital,personal,networked and customized.Objective:This research is to prepare the titanium alloy dental implants by novel3 D printing method and analyze the mechanical properties of 3D printing TC4 material,so as to provide experimental foundation for the application of 3D Printing technology in dental implant field.Methods:CATIA computer model design software was used to build the implant model and its X-ray diffraction(XRD)test coupon,X-ray energy spectrum(EDS)specimen,microhardness experiment test coupon,and the microscopic observation experiment specimen,the model of stretch test according to nation standards was designed as well.The 3D printing laser rapid prototyping technique and TC4 titanium alloy powder was used,the printing references were set.Then there produced the cylinder titanium alloy implant that the diameter is 4.1mm *14mm,the10.0mm*1.0mm*1.0mm X-ray diffraction test coupon,X-ray energy spectrum test coupon,microhardness experiment test coupon,and the stretch test coupon(primary gauge length was 55 mm,parallel length was75 mm,wide was 10 mm,thin was 2 mm).The material phase components of the 3D printing titanium alloy implant were analyzed through XRD experiment;the chemical component of the 3D printing titanium alloy implant was analyzed quantitatively through EDS,and then the chemical component result was compared with the primary powder;the microstructure of the 3D printing titanium alloy implants was observed by metallographic microscope;the range of hardness was tested by using microhardness measuring apparatus;the mechanical properties were tested by universal testing machine,and compared the results with the national tensile properties of metal materials standards,then the morphology of tensile cross-section was observed by scanning electron microscopy.Results:XRD experiment result of 3D printing TC4 titanium alloy specimen shows that the first peak of XRD diagram was made of β-phase,and the other peaks are α-phases;EDS analysis result of 3D printing TC4 titanium alloy specimen showed that element contains(mass fraction)were 90.74% Ti,5.59% Al,and 3.67% V respectively,which were consistent with the component of original powder;the metallographic microscope results of3 D printing TC4 titanium alloy specimen showed it is typical top structure before annealing,and that the microstructure after annealing was more uniform;the result of hardness test showed that the range of Vickers-hardness of the 3D printing titanium alloy is from 372.93 HV to428.46 HV;the results of tensile test showed that the tensile strength,yield strength,extensibility was 1821.7±146.2Mpa,1355.9±109.2Mpa,31.3±1.8% respectively,and their mechanical property corresponded with the national medical standard of dental implant material;under the scanning electron microscopy,the morphology of tensile cross-section of the 3D printing titanium alloy showed there are lots of tough dimples variable in size,and which is typical ductile fracture.Conclusion:The material based on 3D printing laser rapid prototyping technique and TC4 titanium alloy powder possesses a good mechanical properties,satisfies the material demand of medical dental implant.After overcoming all kinds of details,this technique is hoping to widely used in dental implant preparation and immediate individual implantation area.