Sheffield Hallam University and S4S (UK) Limited KTP 24-25 R2

Dentists and orthodontists currently rely on manual, time-consuming steps to turn 3D scans of a patient's mouth into a physical model for printing braces, aligners, or retainers. This project aims to automate that entire workflow—from interpreting the raw scan to preparing the file for mass 3D printing—so that hundreds of custom dental appliances can be produced in a single run without human intervention at each step. The problem is that existing software cannot reliably handle the variety of shapes, angles, and imperfections found in real dental scans. A technician must often clean up the image, orient the model, and add supports by hand. This bottleneck prevents dental labs from scaling up production to meet growing demand for clear aligners and other custom devices. If the automated solution works, dental manufacturers could cut production time and labour costs significantly, making custom orthodontic treatment faster and cheaper for patients. The underlying image-processing and print-preparation algorithms could also transfer to other fields that need to mass-produce patient-specific parts, such as hearing aids, prosthetics, or surgical guides.