Development of dental material testing equipment

Abstract

For this project Dental Material Testing equipment will be developed based on the rolling ball technique introduced in [I]. This technique has been proven reliable in producing surface wear on the dental specimen. The equipment will be developed to run as an embedded system in which PIC 17C756A microcontroller (PIC MCU) is used as the main controller to control the equipment. For this equipment, the components that the PIC MCU is controlling are a DC motor and an encoder to roll the ruby ball on the dental specimen, an LVDT to measure the wear of the specimen and the communication between a Personal Computer and the PIC MCU itself. Then the embedded system based on this PIC MCU is also designed to be able to integrate more peripheral components in the future such as temperature sensor and water pump control unit to make the rig more automated. Then a customised PCB board to mount all the electronic components are designed and fabricated. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) based on Windows 98 platform is also designed for the user to enter parameter to run the equipment and to monitor the data produced by the equipment in which the GUI will be the only interface between the user and the equipment. Also, in order to improve the wear depth measurement performed by the equipment, the design of the mandreal coupling and the mandreal that could reduce the misalignment in the mechanical parts is also developed. The misalignment of mechanical parts in this equipment can contribute to the oscillation in the wear depth measurement and the effects of 2 misalignment types are simulated. Once each of the individual components are developed (GUI, real-time software for PIC MCU, electronic circuit, mechanical parts), they are integrated and tested to form a complete Dental Material testing equipment that ready to perform the surface wear test of the dental material.