Surface roughness of biomaterials and process parameters of titanium dioxide gritblasting for productivity enhancement

Abstract

Titanium is used in dental implants because of its properties as a biomaterial. Surface roughness is very important and fundamental for obtaining required results of biocompatibility. Dental implants with moderately rough surfaces are commonly used in the treatment of edentulous patients. Aiming for improvements in productivity, experiments were conducted in a dental implant industry to evaluate the influence of machining parameters on the surface of dental implants. Samples of different diameters were machined with specific parameters and their roughnesses were measured, before and after blasting, with and without asepsis chemical attack. The results indicate a random increase in roughness according to increase of feed parameter, evidencing that there is no relation between roughness and machining feed after gritblasting. Samples exposed to gritblasting that did not undergo chemical asepsis showed a decrease in roughness, compared to roughness of blasted samples and submitted to asepsis process. However, this trend remained constant leading to the conclusion that titanium-blasting process makes the surface roughness uniform, independently of first roughness variation. No relationship was observed between the variation of feed and the variation of roughness. Thus, in terms of productivity, cutting feed was increased with no harm to the biocompatibility. After more than twenty years of its first use in the industry, this study proves the possibility of changes in the process parameters of titanium dioxide gritblasting to increase productivity in the manufacture of dental implants.