跟高價牙醫說再見：男子用3D打印自制牙套

An undergraduate at New Jersey Institute of Technology made his own plastic braces using a 3D printer, US$60 of materials, and they actually worked.
新澤西理工大學的一名本科生用一臺3D打印機以及60美元的材料爲自己製作了塑料牙箍，而且這些牙箍確實有效。

Amos Dudley had braces in middle school, but he didn't wear a retainer like he was supposed to, so his teeth slowly shifted back. He didn't want to shell out thousands of dollars for a whole new round of braces, so the digital-design major decided to make his own.
阿莫斯·達德利中學的時候就戴上了牙箍，但他沒有按要求戴固位體，所以他的牙齒逐漸後移。他不想花上千美元去做一套新牙箍，所以這位主修數字化設計的大學生就決定自己做牙箍。

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.
製作牙箍的過程並不簡單。他必須研究牙齒矯正的步驟，繪製好相繼更換的牙箍的製作方法，這樣他的牙齒纔會以恰當的方式長回去。

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.
不過一旦完成以上步驟，需要做的就是用相對便宜的塑料製作一系列模型，然後就可以戴上了。

And it was worth it for Dudley, whose smile turned out looking remarkable.
對達德利而言，這很值得，他的微笑也變得十分明顯。

Here is the process he went through:
以下是他製作牙箍的過程：

First he took a mold of his teeth with alginate powder. "These molds are very precise, and capture an amazing amount of detail," he writes.
首先他用海藻酸鹽粉末製作了一個牙齒模具。“這些模具很精密，捕捉了大量的細節，”他寫道。

"I put the mold upside down in a yogurt container, and then filled it with liquid Permastone," he writes.
“我把模具倒置於盛酸奶的容器中，然後用液態的仿石材料填滿容器，”他寫道。

"When it came out, I simply broke off the top to reveal the casting, and used a razor blade to smooth out the surrounding area."
“做成之後，我只是敲碎頂部，露出鑄模，然而用一把剃鬚刀片把四周刮平。”

Now he had a better sense of what was going on with his teeth.
如今他對他的牙齒矯正過程有了更好的瞭解。

The picture below shows the "steps", all 3D-printed out. "Labeling the pieces is critical," he advises. "They look virtually identical."
下面這張照片展示了“牙齒矯正的步驟”，所有的都是3D打印出來的。“貼標籤很重要，”他建議道。“因爲它們看上去幾乎一樣。”