If you want to feel like you are seriously up-to-the-minute technology-wise and get your teeth straightened at the same time, you need to get Invisalign clear aligners. These are the technology superstars of the braces world. In fact, if it wasn’t for digital technology, they wouldn’t even exist.

Invisalign clear aligners were the brainchild of an American college student who wished he could have worn something more like his retainer instead of brackets and wires to straighten his teeth.

It took a long time to get the funding together, and put together a manufacturing process, but since Invisalign first came on the market in the late 1990s, more than 4 million people have had their teeth realigned with this innovative treatment.

How Invisalign is made – digital consultation

Getting your aligners all starts with a consultation with us at Amsel & Wilkins in Banbury. We take detailed digital measurements of your teeth using the Itero handheld scanner, which works by taking hundreds of pictures of your teeth. As they are taken, they are built up into a 3D picture of your teeth on a nearby screen, which we can move around to look at your teeth from any angle.

We also put the image through a programme that shows how the teeth will need to be moved to reach their correct positions, and what they will look like once they are all beautifully straight.

3D printing

We send all that information over to the Invisalign factory in the USA. Because it goes over the Internet, it takes no time at all to get there, whereas sending putty impressions in the post can take several days.

Your aligners are then 3D printed, several of 80,000 such aligners that roll over the 3D conveyor belt every day at Invisalign. These do need to be sent by post, so they take a few days to get to us and then we can fit them for you.

None of this would be possible without digital technology, which is why we think Invisalign is pretty amazing.