Patent ID: 8371847

Claim:
A method of producing a customized orthodontic appliance ( 1 ), the orthodontic appliance comprising brackets fixed to teeth of a dental arch of a patient, each bracket being fixed to a surface of a tooth of the dental arch by a bracket bonding pad of the bracket, and an orthodontic archwire fixed to the brackets in a housing of a bracket body of each bracket, the method comprising: constructing, by a processing device, a numerical representation of each bracket from a numerical representation of the desired end-of-treatment dental arch, known as the dental arch final numerical representation, the operation of constructing the numerical representation of each bracket comprising: positioning a numerical representation of the orthodontic archwire with respect to the dental arch final numerical representation, then for each tooth of the dental arch final numerical representation, positioning a numerical representation of a volume representative of an envelope volume of a bracket body, known as a second volume, of a bracket blank such that it interferes with the orthodontic archwire and in close proximity to the relevant tooth, and for each tooth of the dental arch final numerical representation, positioning a numerical representation of a volume representative of an envelope volume of a bracket bonding pad, known as a first volume, of the bracket blank such that it interferes with the second volume and with the volume of the relevant tooth, then, determining, for each tooth in the first volume and in the second volume, volumetric exclusion zones, which volumetric exclusion zones contain all of the volumes that interfere with the tooth for the first volume and all of the volumes that interfere with the orthodontic archwire for the second volume, wherein the numerical representation of the bracket of one tooth being determined by the volume of the bracket blank minus the volumetric exclusion zones.