Night guard design, from intraoral scan to STL

“Night guard” covers several appliances. NexorCAD designs one of them: the hard, full-arch occlusal splint with a flat occlusal table. It is what many night guard prescriptions mean.

• Hard and full-arch, upper or lower.
• In centric, by default: balanced contacts on the canines, a light contact on the incisors, 20 µm of clearance on the posteriors.
• Canine guidance in laterality and anterior guidance on the incisors in protrusion.
• Not designed: soft or dual-laminate guards, sports mouthguards and partial-coverage appliances.

You load the upper and lower scans as the scanner exported them, STL or PLY, and go through nine steps. In our internal tests, on our founder's own cases, that takes 5 to 10 minutes. Generating the splint takes a few seconds of server time, with nothing for you to do meanwhile.

Each step shows its result before you move on, and any step can be run again without using an export.

• Calculated: cleanup of the scans, the undercut blockout, the outline from your landmarks, the occlusal table and its contacts.
• Set by you: the insertion axis, the retention, the minimum thickness, the landmarks and the five occlusal zones.
• Checked by you: the contacts, shown in colour with their values, and the thickness, with thin areas shown in red.

The output is a closed STL at full resolution, with the fitting surface cut against the wax and the gap you choose, and an optional raised or engraved label. Print it on your own printer in a resin meant for occlusal splints, or send it to whoever prints for you. NexorCAD does not print and does not choose your material.