Preliminary fabrication and characterization of electron beam melted Ti-6Al-4V customized dental implant

The current study was aimed to fabricate customized root form dental implant using additive manufacturing technique for the replacement of missing teeth. The root form dental implant was designed using Geomagic (TM) and Magics (TM), the designed implant was directly manufactured by layering technique using ARCAM A2 (TM) electron beam melting system by employing medical grade Ti- 6Al-4V alloy powder. Furthermore, the fabricated implant was characterized in terms of certain clinically important parameters such as surface microstructure, surface topography, chemical purity and internal porosity. Results confirmed that, fabrication of customized dental implants using additive rapid manufacturing technology offers an attractive method to produce extremely pure form of customized titanium dental implants, the rough and porous surface texture obtained is expected to provide better initial implant stabilization and superior osseointegration. (C) 2016 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University

Effect of disinfection and sterilization on the tensile strength, surface roughness, and wettability of elastomers

Aim: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of chemical disinfection, autoclave, and microwave sterilization on some of the key properties of elastomers.Methods: Five polyvinylsiloxane elastomeric impression materials were evaluated. Forty samples were fabricated from each material. The samples were randomly selected and assigned to four experimental groups with 50 samples each: group I, control; group II, chemical disinfection; group III, autoclave sterilization; and group IV, microwave sterilization. The differences in the mean values were contrasted and compared with the control group and analyzed using two-way analysis of variance (P &lt; 0.05).Results: The results showed that chemical disinfection and autoclave sterilization had no significant effect on the tensile strength and surface roughness, whereas microwave sterilization showed a statistically-significant reduction in tensile strength, and an increase in surface roughness. None of the disinfection and sterilization techniques had a significant effect on wettability. However, autoclave and microwave sterilization resulted in an increase in hydrophilicity of all the materials tested.Conclusion: Chemical disinfection and autoclave sterilization had no statistically-significant effect on the tested properties of elastomers, thus autoclave sterilization can be considered as an alternative and an effective mode of disinfection and sterilization to eliminate all forms of disease causing microorganisms from dental impressions.</p