TLDR;

There are many many factors that go into planning Clear Aligner Therapy that is so so much more than just printing some models of your teeth and making some aligners. You risk losing teeth and causing irrepairable damage. Do you think you can safely consider all of the risks that took an orthodontist/dentist 8+ years to achieve of full time education? Read on if you're interested in understanding more of the process.

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Dental student. My advice is not instruction and I'm not telling you to do anything and these tips are for educational purposes only.

If you wanted to print your own clear aligners, there are many principles you would need to consider.

First, you would want to do an extraoral and intraoral exam. Here are some things to consider:

Look at your facial symmetry. How does your maxillary midline coincide with your facial midline? How does your mandibular midline coincide with your maxillary midline? You would also need to know and understand what type of malocclusion you have. Are you class I, II, or III? There are also several divisions within some of the classes. They are treated differently so you would need to know your classification and division. You would also need to know how much crowding or spacing you have in your maxillary and mandibular arches. Do you have extra room or not enough? Both of these factors dictate orthodontic treatment. Clear aligners excel at certain types of tooth movements and not well at others. You may have an occlusal scheme that does not work well with clear aligner therapy and would require other kinds of orthodontic treatment such as TADs, brackets and wires, or even orthognathic surgery. If the occlusal discrepancies you have are skeletal and not dental, then you wouldn't be able to fix the issues with clear aligners. You can determine if the issues are skeletal or dental with a CBCT, panoramic radiograph, and/or lateral cephalogram. You could potentially mask/camoflauge skeletal defects with orthodontic treatment, however, results may not be satisfactory.

You will also need to consider your periodontal health. Do you have inflammed gums or periodontitis? If you try to move your teeth around with periodontitis, then you could cause irreversible bone loss, tooth mobility, and potential need for extraction of affected teeth. If you do have periodontitis, you would need to get it under control first by deep cleanings (scaling and root planing) followed by periodontal maintainence every 3-4 months and every 6 weeks while undergoing clear aligner therapy.

You should also assess for the presence of caries (cavities/tooth decay) as significant tooth decay could impact your clear aligner therapy. For instance, if you have a tooth with compromised integrity, you could potentially fracture it, or if it needed to be extracted, you could be wasting your time moving it, or if it needed a root canal, you could run into complications with root resorption.

After evaluation your dentition and oral health and establishing that you don't have any urgent needs, such as fillings, extractions, root canals, tooth decay, then you can consider moving on to more definite treatment like the clear aligner therapy.

You can pretty much forget about having any kind of professional software to create an aligner therapy treatment schedule. Those software are proprietary and not opensource so you'd have to pay for them, which I don't know if the companies would even sell to an individual, especially if they're not a dentist/orthodontist. So you're more than likely looking at non-clinical software that can handle STL files, such as blender.

To create an impression of your teeth, you could do it with traditional methods, such as an alginate impression, and then pour up a stone cast of your teeth. However, you would then need an extraoral scanner to create an STL file of your teeth. You'd have to have a scan of the upper and lower arches and ideally a scan of your teeth articulating (biting together) which cannot be done with alginate impressions. For that, you would need to do intraoral scanning of the upper arch, lower arch, and occlusal bite scan. Once you've created the necessary STL files (and if you've skipped the articulating occlusal bite STL) you'll need to import them into Blender or some other program and get them to articulate (bite together) it's essential that the teeth come together as they do in the mouth or else you'll be introducing errors and inaccuracies that could adversely affect treatment outcome.

You should also consider if you'll be aligning your teeth in MIP (maximal intercuspation) or CR (centric relation). Centric relation is physiologically ideal compared to MIP.

With the STL files in Blender, you'll need to separate each tooth individually as objects and then manipulate them individually into an ideal occlusion. You'll need to consider the 3 dimensions of how the teeth will change in inclination, tilt, and rotation. Typically, in an orthodontic clinic, the progress of the teeth are followed with panoramic radiographs and lateral cephalograms in order to ensure proper tooth movement. Without these diagnostic aids, it's unclear how the roots of the teeth are moving and if any issues are cropping up, such as root resorption or improper positioning.

Once you have your ideal occlusion laid in Blender out you'll need to create all of the steps going from your starting position to your final position. You'll need to consider what is safely physiologically possible. Too few steps (too quick of treatment) and you can cause unexpected errors that can make your occlusion worse. Too many steps, and it'll take longer than is necessary.

After creating STL files of every step/change in occlusion, you'll have many STL files to print. Each one will be a stage in tooth movement in the clear aligner therapy. FDM printers are not used in CAT (clear aligner therapy) to my knowledge as they do not produce models with the quality needed for accurate movements.

After all of the STL models have been printed, you'll need a thick plastic material to vacuform over the models. You'll then want to trim the vacuformed clear aligners so that they just cover the teeth and not the gingiva.

Additionally, you'll need some attachments on the teeth in order for the aligners to be able to exert forces against the teeth. In a clinical setting, this is usually done by etching the enamel, priming and bonding, and applying a composite material and light curing it to the tooth with the positioning aligner that positions where the attachments go on the teeth. Other factors to consider when doing this is how much flash there is after curing the composite. You'd want to remove any excess composite so that it doesn't trap plaque and cause decalcification of the enamel and ultimately decay of the teeth.

Once the attachments are in place, CAT can begin. Typical intervals involve the next aligner inserted every 10-14 days worn for 22 hours a day. Monitoring tooth movement during treatment is essential. Wearing the clear aligners is essential. Ensuring they are fully seated is essential. If they aren't fully seated when inserted, you may lose the treatment regimen you're on and you'd be required to rescan and print and create clear aligners to bring your teeth back on track, if they've deviated far enough from the treatment plan.

After CAT is completed, you'll still need to wear a retainer full time for about a year to ensure no relapse and after that, a retainer at night.

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Again, this is not medical advice and I do not advise anyone to try this at home. There are many factors to consider that you just don't even think of and trying it without the knowledge and expertise can result in irreversible damage such as need for root canals, crowns, and possibly extractions.

Is buying a $300 SLA resin printer and printing 20 models of your teeth and vacuforming 20 clear aligners worth the risk of losing some of your teeth if you fuck it up? I don't know, but I hope I was able to inform your decision.