$300 Tailored, 3D-printed Toothbrush ‘perfectly’ cleans your teeth in just six seconds

No, it isn’t the misshapen genitalia of the eponymous creature from the Alien movies: It’s a 3D-printed toothbrush that promises to give you “perfectly clean teeth” in just six seconds, with optimum plaque removal and protection of gums.

Called the Blizzident, it is essentially a custom-made toothbrush that’s perfectly formed to the shape of your teeth. You go to your dentist, get a 3D scan of your mouth, and then upload the model to the Blizzident website. The company uses a 3D printer to create an inverse mold of your mouth, and then attaches “soft, ultrafine bristles” to the mold to turn it into a toothbrush. To brush your teeth, you apparently just insert the Blizzident and then bite and grind your teeth 15 times — which takes roughly six seconds. Because the toothbrush is so perfectly formed, and because there are so many bristles, it cleans your teeth perfectly.

Rounding out the technical details, the Blizzident costs $300, and you’ll need to replace it every year ($160 for a new one, or $90 to have your current one refurbished with new bristles). Getting a scan from your dentist will probably cost between $100 and $200. To brush your teeth, you put toothpaste on your tongue, move it over your upper teeth, and then the act of biting and grinding will let the toothpaste flow over your lower teeth. The Blizzident apparently cleans your tongue, too, and the cleaning process (the Bass technique) is so perfect that you apparently don’t need to speed much time flossing. Blizzident is also usable by kids (but their teeth move around, so it’ll cost you dearly to get new molds made regularly).




The appeal of the Blizzident, of course, beyond having perfectly clean teeth, is the massive time saving. If you brush and floss your teeth properly, it should take you around 10 minutes per day; with Blizzident and some basic flossing, it takes a total of 60 seconds per day. Saving nine minutes per day equates to 3285 minutes — just under 55 hours — per year. If you’re the kind of person who wished that days were a bit longer, the Blizzident may be exactly what you’re looking for.

At this point we should note that the makers of Blizzident haven’t yet published any clinical trials for the new toothbrush, but they’re coming “soon.” Not that you really need FDA approval for a toothbrush, but in case you’re concerned, the plastics used in the production process have FDA approval. Some comments made by dentists elsewhere on the internet suggest that the Blizzident might be good at cleaning your teeth, but the short brushing duration might not give the fluoride in your toothpaste time to sink into your teeth. Mostly, though, the overwhelming reaction towards Blizzident is that people want to see it in action, with some real-world testing, before they spend $300 of their hard-earned dollars.

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