Solid freeform fabrication (SFF), also termed as layered manufacturing, produces parts directly from a computer model without part-specific tooling and human intervention through selective slurry extrusion (SSE) based technique. successfully fabricated multi-material dental crown) and further proposed a novel approach (as shown in Figure 1), termed as equal distance offset, to representing and process planning for SFF of functionally graded materials so as to meet the requirement of modeling and fabricating 3D complex shaped FGM a neutral arbitrary 3D CAD model is adaptively sliced into a series of 2D layers. Within each layer, 2D material gradients are designed and represented via dividing the 2D shape into several sub-regions enclosed by iso-composition contours.

If needed, the material composition gradient within each of the sub-regions can be further specified by applying the equal distance offset algorithm to each sub-region. Using this approach, an arbitrary-shaped 3D FGM object with linear or non-linear composition gradients can be represented and fabricated via suitable SFF machines. The process planning for SFF of FGM objects. In recent years, the inkjet color printing based SFF technology has been of great interests in tissue engineering as it can fabricate 3D complex shaped graded material with smooth gradients. Human teeth have some very good properties such as high hardness and wear ability, good heat insulation, high strength, etc. These properties are related to its graded structure shows a drawing of a healthy tooth cut in half lengthways, which shows the layers of the tooth and its internal structure, as well as how the tooth relates to the gum and surrounding jaw bone.

A normal tooth can be divided into three parts: the crown, the neck and the root. The crown is the part of the tooth that is visible above the gum (gingiva). The neck is the region of the tooth that is at the gum line, between the root and the crown. The root is the region of the tooth that is below the gum. Some teeth have only one root, for example, incisors and canine (eye) teeth, whereas molars and premolars have 4 roots per tooth. The crown of each tooth has a coating of enamel, which protects the underlying dentine. Enamel is the hardest substance in the human body, harder even than bone. It gains its hardness from tightly packed rows of calcium and phosphorus crystals within a protein matrix structure. Once the enamel has been formed during tooth development, there is little turnover of its minerals during life. Mature enamel is not considered to be a ‘living’ tissue. The major component of the inside of the tooth is dentine. This substance is slightly softer than enamel, with a structure more like bone. It is elastic and compressible in contrast to the brittle nature of enamel. Dentine is sensitive. It contains tiny tubules throughout its structure that connect with the central nerve of the tooth within the pulp. Dentine is a ‘live’ tissue.

Thanks & Regards,
Nicola B
Editorial Team
Journal of Biochemistry & Biotechnology