A digital-design major at the New Jersey Institute of Technology made his own plastic braces using a 3D printer:
He was broke, but had access to a high-quality 3D printer through his university. He took full advantage of this.
The process wasn’t exactly easy. He had to research orthodontic procedures and plot the route of his successive braces, so his teeth would move in the right way. But once that was done, all it took was fabricating a series of models out of relatively inexpensive plastic, and then following through on wearing them.
His two main reference texts, he explains, were Contemporary Orthodontics (5e) by William Proffit DDS, PhD, and Orthodontics at a Glance by Gill Daljit.
