I 3D Printed My Own Skull!
After undergoing orthognathic surgery, I really wanted to create an art piece that was representative of what I went through. While 3D printing is very common in the dental field/OMFS, I found that consumer level programs are not created to do this. Many programs required expensive licenses, and most of them would not even offer trial periods since I am not licensed. While I work on the skull/maxillary area, here is my current project result.
Inspiration & MOCKUP
After seeing in a Facebook surgery support grup that someones oral surgeon had a colorful model, I knew that I had to have one also!! However, for me, I knew I wanted the accuracy of the anatomy to be there and the model to be sized at 100% scale.
Turning the CBCT into a printable file
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You can see here that the when my imaging viewer renders the DCM file for 3D viewing, it creates a model with many holes and quite a bit of extraneous matter if I was to adjust the bone density.
After importing to Blender (the 3D modeling application) I spent time filling in holes and smoothing bumps on the skull so that it would print easier.
Next, I requested STL files of my teeth taken from the iTero scanner at my orthodontist's office because I knew it would produce more accuate results. You can see that the teeth were a lower resolution from the CBCT than the iTero scans directly below. So I had to learn how to remove them from the existing model and have them replaced with the iTero scan. Easier said than done, but I figured it out.
TADA!! Much better!! I put the plates into a seperate file to be dealt with at another time, as those wouldn't need to be secured to the model, I wanted to print them in a different color anyway.
Printing the mandible
Print time!! I headed to my Alma Mater, Kent State University to utilize their Design Innovation Hub which gave me access to 3D printers. I began with the ramus, as this was the part requiring the least detail. I chose to print those pink and the remainder of the mandible in blue. While I originally planned to paint the blue, I ended up liking the semi translucent effect and kept it. I tried my best to match the pink to the filament used, but it came out quite a bit lighter than depicted. Oh well! I did a lot of sanding and painting here in order to remove layer lines caused by the 3D printer.
Once the paint was cured, I found and purchased tiny screws the fit into the printed plates, hand painted the teeth with a detail brush, clear coated all of the pieces, then put them together!
Printing the SKULL
Unfortnately due to the size and amount of support material required to ensure a sucessful print, the school did not have enough of the blue color I used for the mandible, so I had to adapt. I chose to print in a pink/blue transition filament, hoping the blue would be at the front... unfortunately the pink printed in the front. Haha. Since it was costly to print, I didn't want to redo it and instead chose to paint it instead.
A big time saver this time was that I used Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty to remove the later lines after my first layer of spray paint. This meant I needed to do a lot less layers of spray paint compared to my ramus. I then got to masking off other areas to target those specifically with other colors.
After target painting each piece I was left with an almost finished product... I just need to do some small touch ups, sand, lacquer, then print/mount the plates and my project will be complete! :)
