To give a tooth: a new installation will improve the engraftment of dental implants

Russian engineers have created the first domestic hardware and software package for evaluating the quality of miniature metal products such as dental implants. Until now, Western systems have mainly been used to check the properties of such prostheses for compliance with the declared characteristics, the cost of which has more than doubled after the sanctions. Manufacturers now have affordable equipment that is easy to integrate into the workflow. According to dentists, its implementation will make high-quality dental prosthetics more accessible to the end user.

Micrometron system

ITMO specialists have created Russia's first hardware and software package for quality control of dental implants and other miniature metal products. The development, called Micrometron, makes it possible to fully automate and speed up the process of checking parts for their declared characteristics. The system is integrated into robotic production lines. The complex includes an optical measuring machine and specialized software.

Photo: ITMO

— The main task of the software is to carry out dimensional control according to a given plan, comparing the actual linear—angular parameters of the product with reference values. To check complex—shaped parts, the system automatically orients the product using an integrated precision drive according to program commands," said Fedor Inochkin, head of the ITMO International Scientific Laboratory for Intelligent Optical Systems.

The second function is quality control of the surface treatment: detection of defects, checking the presence of the elements provided by the design and evaluating their compliance with a given geometry. A reference 3D model of the part is used for this purpose. The entire complex is designed to automate control at high-tech enterprises producing special-purpose products, he added.

Photo: ITMO

Traditionally, quality control of microscopic products relies heavily on the manual labor of supervisors who use the simplest measuring instruments — calipers, optical microscopes, and others. The alternative is automated systems of foreign production, represented on the world market by European, Japanese and Chinese brands. However, such solutions are usually specialized.: They are focused either on precision dimensional control or solely on surface quality assessment. The advantage of ITMO's development lies in combining both precision dimensional control and surface treatment quality control in one cycle.

The system is designed for automated control of complex shaped products up to 30 mm in size. It can be implemented in various industries: from the manufacture of dental and orthopedic implants to the production of parts for engines, turbines, fuel equipment, components for precision instruments, machines and mechanisms.

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The need for the production of micro-components

The technological cycle begins with the creation of a digital "control plan" for the product. The operator sets a sequence of operations that determine the orientation of the product, the controlled parameters and the permissible deviations. This plan becomes a template for subsequent product control cycles of this type.

Photo: ITMO

Next, a part is installed in the working area of the control and measuring machine. At the ready signal, the complex performs the entire automatic control cycle: it scans the product, alternately using frontal and shadow illumination to analyze the quality of surface treatment and accurately control the geometric parameters of the product. The program compares the received data with the values in the digital control plan and the form of the virtual reference and visualizes the verification results. The control cycle is performed in real time, and the technology itself can be directly integrated into robotic production lines.

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As Sergey Rozhnov, General Director of the ImplantTime Dental Implantology Center, told Izvestia, modern optical systems of Western production are now mainly used to control the quality of dental implants. Each product is placed in a computer system, into which the design of the prosthesis with all the measurements is entered.

— Most of these devices have been sanctioned because they are dual-use equipment and can be used not only for medical purposes. It cannot be supplied to our country. In addition, there are difficulties with the maintenance of already installed equipment," he said.

Photo: ITMO

ITMO's development will be much more financially affordable: due to the impossibility of direct import of optical systems to Russia, their cost has increased by about 2.5 times. The new equipment will make it possible to reduce the cost of both quality control in production and the products themselves for patients, the specialist emphasized.

Alexey Karfidov, Head of the Department of Technological Equipment Engineering at NUST MISIS, noted that as technology develops, the miniaturization of parts is constantly increasing and at the same time the requirements for their quality are increasing. Therefore, such systems are of considerable interest to Russian manufacturers.