Robotic bending of orthodontic archwires

Industrial Robot

ISSN: 0143-991x

Article publication date: 1 December 2004

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Keywords

Citation

Rigelsford, J. (2004), "Robotic bending of orthodontic archwires", Industrial Robot, Vol. 31 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2004.04931fad.007

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Robotic bending of orthodontic archwires

Robotic bending of orthodontic archwires

Keywords: Patents, Medical robots

Applicant: OraMetrix, Inc., USAPatent number: US6,755,064Publication date: 29 June 2004Title: Robot and method for bending orthodontic archwires and other medical devices

A robotic bending apparatus for automatically bending orthodontic archwires, retainers, or other orthodontic or medical devices into a particular shape, is presented.

The bending apparatus comprises a robot mounted to a base or table support surface. A first gripping tool has a structure for holding the archwire or other medical device and is provided that is either be fixed with respect to the base or may be incorporated into a moveable arm. The second gripping tool is mounted to the end of a moveable six-axis robot arm having a proximal portion also mounted to the base and a distal end that can move relative to the fixed gripping tool about three translational and three rotational axes. Preferably, the gripping tools incorporate force sensors which are used to determine overbends needed to get the desired final shape of the archwire, and may also include a resistive heating system in which current flows through the wire while the wire is held in a bent condition to heat the wire and thereby retain the bent shape of the wire.

Jon Rigelsford

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