Increasing one's bite capacity...
Alright, here's a bit of a complex one with a lightly misleading title. ^^
Human teeth aren't unimpressive. but.... What if someone wanted new teeth.
Ones that were sharper or stronger, fit together better... Easier to keep clean, possibly in themselves able to keep bacteria away? Didn't decay like normal ones do when neglected. Maybe even... able to preform other tasks, contain other functions or capacities? :O
Perhaps a replacement or substitute for bad teeth, or replacing bad genetics granting bad teeth?
I know there's methods for extracting teeth. I'm sure there's ideas for attaching new teeth to the jaw and skull. There's materials that would work... there's the processes and tools to make the parts and design the parts. ^^
What are the huge snags with this? :o
Gums, Roots. Bone. The chemical and physical wear and tear they are exposed to. Blah.
Let's talk about this ^^
Comments
For capabilities do you mean new uses for a tooth or integrating a tech? I would like to see a tooth replacement fabricated around a bone conduction. How to power and such I have no idea. I'm not too sure how many possibilities there could be with a tooth.
Personally my teeth are sharper then most people I've met. I can cut through braided fishing line 60lbs saltwater. (Not lying made $20usd at school from it)
Perhaps making a TiN or some other high strength composite.
Now all I'm thinking of is James Bond....
I can only see a conduction for sound. I just don't see the usefulness of an RFID in my mouth. Or even want to put a reader up too my mouth to scan it. I could see a secure place for keeping information you NEVER want any person to access.
When I was in grade eight, my friends and I were playing around with the shocker from an electronic lighter and zapping one another and I dared someone to shock his tooth. He naturally refused so I went first and shocked one of my dead teeth. No problem. That poor sucker followed my example and curled up in pain when he sent that voltage right to a tooth nerve.
I don't feel like I get less information from those dead teeth but they've been dead for about 20 years so maybe I'm just used to the lack of sensation.
Briefly on teeth nerves. I've always figured they didn't give much any sensation and I've often wondered what purpose they serve. Teeth are rigid and don't bend or flex enough to feel that and they don't have the "touch" sense that skin has. I always assumed the feeling of teeth on other teeth was more the muscles in the jaw feeling it. Maybe I'm wrong.
On to the exciting teeth implants. I have several ideas for teeth implants, ranging from little robots that clean your teeth and take shelter inside a recess (cavity sounds bad when talking about teeth) inside an artificial tooth (or a set of teeth) when not actively cleaning. To bone conducting two-way communicator. Like the Bluetooth earpieces we talked about implanting in the past near the ear, the upper jaw could conduct sound to the ear just as easily, if not more so since you could literally have the speaker fixed to the metal screwed into the bone. My biggest concern with teeth implants is what potential damage could be done from the mounting bit, the bit that sort of gets screwed into the jaw bone. If someone can give me a decent explanation as to why gums couldn't hold an artificial tooth like they do natural teeth, that'd be great. I've been assuming it was partially just that most artificial teeth are implanted because the natural teeth aren't held in by the gums for whatever reason so it's not that they can't hold artificial teeth, rather it's that the implants are designed for the case when they don't hold natural teeth, thus artificial teeth held in naturally wouldn't work.
Also, see my latest post here: http://forum.biohack.me/discussion/1711/removing-toenails#Item_31
Also @AlexSmith I believe you're thinking of the wrong material... tritium is an isotope of Protium. Used to make long lasting glowing liquid capsules. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium
Your teeth are actually secured to the jawbone itself, not the gums, by root fibers. The gums form a protective barrier to prevent germs from infecting this connection or the jawbone itself. Now if we could create connective tissue that could bind to metal that would solve so many problems.
Also @Jupiter, I believe @AlexSmith knows what tritium is and is talking about glowing teeth. He's the inventor of the tritium Firefly Tattoos currently being discussed on this forum.
Sapphire.
Second strongest transparent material (second to diamond). Currently used for camera lenses (particularly on phone cameras) and in some other places on phones, iPhone's home button is made of Sapphire, as an example. Although typically thought of as a blue color, it can be made completely transparent as well.
EDIT: If I understand correctly, the "Typical tensile strengths section" here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_tensile_strength would indicate that Sapphire is stronger than bone, which is what I would have to compare Teeth to as Teeth aren't on the list. I'll point out, didn't bother trying to find the Shear Strength, I don't believe that's relevant considering how forces are exerted when biting/chewing.
However, before we all get overly excited about metal teeth, the oral cavity is actually quite hostile to most metals. It's always warm, wet with electrolytes, and under tremendous pressure - not the best place for metal. There is a reason why people used to use gold - one of the most unreactive metal they have in the past, and nowadays the titanium is used as anchorage - it's all covered by the ceramic (from memory) "teeth".
I would suppose that you can get it into any shape like sharp teeth, and I'm sure that there is an (African?) tribe out there who sharpens their teeth as part of their custom, so self-biting might not be as big a problem as one might think. Though pulling out all your teeth to get them all teeth implants doesn't sound very pleasant!
Functionalization of Titanium with Chitosan via Silanation: Evaluation of Biological and Mechanical Performances
Stilll, a brief search on dental implants still yield ceramic teeth with titanium as anchorage only being used at the clinical level right now.