Rapid Prototyping: A New Chapter in Dentistry

tissue engineering, etc. The RP technology has already been used in building medical models representing a new approach for surgical planning and simulation and is now being explored in the field of dentistry.1 The subtractive technique is achieved by lathing, milling, or grinding, whereas the additive technique is achieved by layered manufacturing or solid free form manufacturing. The subtractive technique is able to capture only the external surface data of the proposed object and not the internal complex shapes, which can be captured by the additive techniques.2 In all commercial RP processes, the model is fabricated by deposition of layers along the x–y plane two dimensionally, and all the single layers are stacked up on top of each other along the z-axis.