College student 3-D printed his own braces to save money

(FoxNews.com) - An innovative college student who was self-conscious about his smile has been straightening his top teeth for the past few months using 3-D printed braces.

Amos Dudley, 24, was looking for a way to skip paying $8,000 for a set of clear braces from a name brand, Fox13Now reported. Using a high-end 3-D printer at his school, New Jersey Institute of Technology, he manufactured his own braces for a total of $60.

He scanned and printed models of his teeth and then molded non-toxic plastic around them to form a set of 12 clear braces, Fox13Now reported. He then determined how far he needed to move each tooth to correct misalignment problems, and divided it by the maximum recommended distance a tooth should travel to determine the design for each alignment tray.

“It was very obvious which tooth [the tray] was putting pressure on,” Dudley told Fox13Now. “I was sort of worried about accumulated error, but that wasn’t the case so that was a pretty glorious moment.”

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