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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
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Well firstly you can have dental implants in the sense of a fake tooth being stuck in place of a broken one. My father has one. As far as I'm aware you can have them sharpened or sharpen them yourself. 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....
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I'm referring to the extent of the possibility of removing and replacing all teeth in the mouth with replacements. molars, incisors, the whole nine yards. ^^and as far as capacities, there's no reason one couldn't go either way. Those firefly tattoos? well, what if you want a glowing tooth or two?Maybe slip the good bits from an rfid tag into a larger molar.... That would be pretty secure...There's a huge amount of variety that could be done with this, ranging from functional super-sharp teeth that are designed to be completely optimized for diving material, or teeth designed to much better crush hard objects.The fundamental question being... Is it possible to completely remove everything from a tooth and replace it with a stable constructed counterpart that's effectively permanent?
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If you wanted to secure the prosthetic to the jaw bone, go for titanium. Bone has a tendency to integrate with the metal. You can check out osseointegration for details
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Awesome idea but it would be terrible to bite your tongue or inside of your cheek with super sharp teeth. Maybe get an implanted one that picks up radio signals or the like?
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@Unlucky_strikes Thank you, Info is tasty. ^^@SurvivorSVN That would suck. A lot. X 3 XBut yes! you get the idea. What would be necessary to make a tooth that could actually let one 'hear' radio waves? James Bond... :o
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Um... you're literally describing dental implants. they are a thing, and I have one tooth done that way. Some teeth are replaced with a crown- grind down the old tooth, put a fake cap on it (i've got one of those, too.) but dental implants they remove your tooth, put a titanium peg into your jaw, and then once that heals put in a pointed metal piece and mount a tooth on top of it:
Just google image search dental implants. As for how it holds up- sure, the tooth is much stronger and able to be replaced, but you still have to take care of your gums and tongue and everything else, so don't expect to stop brushing your teeth.As for doing more with it, there are some bone conduction devices that fit in the mouth, and I think some kind of magnet/rfid in teeth was discussed before on the forum. if you search tooth or teeth and dig through old threads you may find it. -
@rpyka yes your right about the implants I think it may of been lost in my post with all my ramblings. My father has one in his mouth (very old version). Also there has been discussion on placing a magnet in a tooth that has been drilled but not replaced. 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.
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I've thought about dental implants in the past, but never taken it beyond that. Aside from actually making the teeth replacements you want, the hard part may be finding a dentist willing to install them, but it should be possible.I was thinking about having a row of tritium teeth with the back side being a kind of flip up blade, so most of the time it would be inline with the rest of the tooth so you don't cut yourself, but it could slid up with your tongue... but I don't think it's very practical, which is why it remained a day dream for me.
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And take care to mind which metals you use if you have the crappy kinda fillings in the teeth you dont remove, or the materials used if many.You get an ion stream otherwise as the metals act like a car battery and dissolve slowly.(not saying it'd melt down, but most softer/heavier metals will slowly accumulate in the body.. )
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One problem with metal teeth could be like the problem I have with my fillings. If i make any contact with metal between the top and bottom teeth I get a zing that feels like licking a 9volt battery. I don't know what causes it but if you had the same thing every time you close your teeth it would be agony.
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And.. You'd need to place the cutting point(dunno what its called in english) much higher, otherwise the hard materials you'd chew on would slice up your gums.And infection is a bitch with implants..Pondered titanium fangs for many years myself..
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Another downside for people with normal teeth is loss of sensation. The nerves in the teeth give you a surprising amount of information.
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Funny story about nerves in teeth. Three teeth in my lower jaw escaped when I was a kid. They had help from a trampoline. Dead teeth, root canals, the whole shebang.
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.
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When I got braces, I stopped being able to feel my teeth for about 2 days. My teeth didn't feel like they were mine anymore, so my experience tells me that it would feel very weird with different teeth.
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Very excited about this topic. :) 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
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Au Contraire about dental nerves. They sense pressure, cold, heat, and pain. I can attest to the difference between a tooth with and without a nerve, as I had a root canal done on one of my molars not too long ago. The nerves in the gum around the tooth eventually compensate for pressure sensation, but your sensation of heat and cold is never the same for that tooth. Also, the phantom pain for having a bunch of nerve removed sticks around... For awhile.Metal teeth would be great... Wouldn't have to worry about chipping anymore.Teeth grow into the bone somewhat, depending on which teeth you're looking at. Also, we've yet to utilize a material in dental implants that can match "HA" that's been properly structured and filled with cells that maintain the interior, in terms of biointegration. Also, The rejection response for inserting anything into inflamed tissue can be dodgy. A dentist can probably give you a better explanation.
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@Jupiter 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.
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@Unlucky_Strikes Good to know. Guess that changes things a bit. But my point still remains. Something that bonds naturally to the body the same way actual teeth do would be preferable to the whole screw in the jaw method. Well, I suppose it depends a bit on what these teeth are for.
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Is there any reason the titanium bolt tooth replacements (sorry, having a bad day with words today) don't have the issues we've covered with transdermal implants? That's something I've never quite understood, unless I'm missing a whole bunch of maintenance involved. 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.
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@Alternate @AlexSmith Possibly, I read the bit about tritium teeth with a flip up blade and thought he meant like, titanium, with flip up blade for cutting. Didn't occur to me that the tritium could be for something unrelated to the cutting.
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Well a screw might be more secure than a root connection even if we could make one. The nerves in your teeth naturally stop you from chewing something that could break a tooth loose where the titanium tooth wouldn't provide that feedback. You could easily end up ripping it out. Wouldn't tritium be too dim to see unless you used a form of glass which I don't think would make a good tooth? I know teeth are translucent because I can see the rot on my front tooth through the enamel but I don't know what kind of replacement would be strong enough not to break during chewing or teeth grinding.
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Just throwing it out there... 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.
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An idea after reading this, I don't know how small you could make a receiver before its basically useless, but maybe with a tooth for the receiver and a neighbouring tooth for a speaker, and then on the other side of the mouth, a tooth for a transmitter and a mic, close range communication via radio could be possible?
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Looks like an idea with a bit of a bite to it. :P 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!
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Bast, the links broken, but its also plos one, which is an open access journal, and theyre not always too trustworthy
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the link isn't broken, it's just not clickable. copy and paste. the article is:Functionalization of Titanium with Chitosan via Silanation: Evaluation of Biological and Mechanical Performancesplos is extremely legit. what makes you say open source journals aren't trustworthy? there seems to be the same amount of bullshit in all areas.
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@Bast: Interesting article. Looks like new stuff has been going on behind my back. Stilll, a brief search on dental implants still yield ceramic teeth with titanium as anchorage only being used at the clinical level right now.
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