Tooth straightening has been a human preoccupation for millennia, with archaeologists uncovering mummified our bodies courting again over two thousand years with tooth certain in metallic bands. Even Egyptian queen Cleopatra is rumored to have worn a rudimentary teeth-straightening system. That stated, orthodontia as a subject has solely actually existed for the previous couple of hundred years and has a timeline marked by varied improvements, from very uncomfortable trying 18th-century headgear, to proto-braces that consisted of wrapping metallic wire spherical tooth, to the invention of dental adhesives and stainless-steel brackets within the Seventies. Since then, orthodontia has continued to evolve, with at present’s frontier being formed by superior applied sciences like additive manufacturing, and ceramic AM particularly.
Lithoz, a frontrunner in ceramic SLA 3D printing, has dropped at market {hardware}, software program and supplies which are enabling orthodontists to supply their sufferers extra environment friendly and customised options. Amongst them is likely one of the firm’s latest merchandise, LithaBite, an alumina-based materials developed for the manufacturing of translucent orthodontic brackets.
LithaBite, which incorporates 99.99% high-purity aluminum oxide, provides a mixture of helpful properties for braces, together with excessive density, excessive power and optimum friction. Furthermore, customers can obtain tolerances of lower than 10 µm and a wire slot geometry precision of higher than 7 µm – a price that impressed many at IDS 2025, the place LithaBite was unveiled. This diploma of precision is important to making sure that every bracket integrates seamlessly with the affected person’s tooth and is performing as wanted together with the archwire.
In additional particular phrases, the wire slot is the a part of the bracket the place the archwire is fed, and the geometry of the wire slot performs an vital function in figuring out the motion of tooth and friction between the wire and bracket. Due to this fact, having a excessive stage of precision for the wire slot geometry is essential to making sure the efficiency of the orthodontic gadgets, translating into shorter therapies and a extra comfy expertise for sufferers.
Together with Lithoz’s proprietary LCM expertise, LithaBite is appropriate for the creation of optimized orthodontic brackets that provide better aesthetic high quality — a key precedence for braces-wearers. On this entrance, the fabric is characterised by an ultra-smooth end and translucent colour, which is much extra delicate on the tooth than the standard metallic brackets many people wore in our youths.
Past improved aesthetics for sufferers, the technical ceramic additionally provides orthodontic labs many advantages on the subject of effectivity. For one, there may be minimal materials consumption required when utilizing LithaBone, lower than 0.1 gram per bracket, which implies that a bit materials goes a great distance. The fabric additionally matches right into a extremely automated digital workflow that facilitates better customization, so that every 3D printed bracket is optimized in match for the affected person’s mouth. LithaBone can be appropriate for the manufacturing of several types of brackets, together with self-ligating brackets, which use an inside mechanism reasonably than elastics to use a certain amount of strain to the braces’ archwire.
Whereas extra typical bracket manufacturing processes contain using pricey injection molding and milling processes—each of that are conducive to generic bracket designs—3D printing makes it potential to create bespoke brackets with out having to begin the manufacturing workflow from scratch, leading to a price of lower than $1 per bracket. Furthermore, ceramic AM circumvents the prices and time related to making tooling for injection molding in addition to the fabric waste generated within the milling course of.
“With ultra-precise Lithoz LCM ceramic 3D printing expertise, translucent ceramic brackets can now be produced at impressively low prices,” says Dr. Daniel Bomze, Director Medical Options at Lithoz. “These 3D printed ceramic brackets are completely biocompatible, extremely sturdy and reside as much as the very best aesthetical requirements. They seamlessly combine advanced adhesive surfaces to make sure an ideal match, which makes remedy shorter and fewer painful. It’s a real win-win state of affairs: limitless variations may be printed in giant volumes at no further value, with instruments as the largest fastened value drivers being utterly eradicated.”
The brand new LithaBite materials, which was lately introduced at IDS 2025, the main world commerce honest for the dental market, matches into Lithoz’s rising portfolio of dental options, which incorporates its CeraFab S65 Medical 3D printer, and supplies LithaCon (a zirconia-based ceramic excellent for dental implants), LithaBone HA 400 (a Hydroxyapatite-based bone substitute with bioresorbable properties) and LithaBone HA 480 (an analogous ceramic resin with improved wall thickness).
LithaBite enhances Lithoz’s current dental options by providing a biocompatible, sturdy, high-resolution and—importantly—translucent materials, excellent for economically producing high-precision and aesthetically delicate brackets that can assist enhance smiles everywhere in the world.
