Blizzident is a custom-made, 3D printed, whole-mouth-at-once toothbrush that claims to be able to clean your teeth in six seconds. It uses a mold of your teeth, lined with “a dense field of tailored bristles” that work with an integrated tongue-scraper and floss to conduct what appears to be a thorough scraping, brushing, and flossing of all the significant mouth-surfaces.
It’s expensive — there’s the cost of a scan or impression (up to $200), then $300 for a brush that lasts a year (replacement brushes are $160 thereafter). But as high as those prices are, I’m rather taken with this: the prices are sure to come down — 3D-printed anything costs too much, thanks to soon-to-expire patents that slap a ~5000 percent markup on the plastic, and scanning just keeps getting cheaper. And while the normal two minutes’ brushing time isn’t much, but if you brush twice a day, every day, and can effectively zero that out, it adds up. Plus, I’m always in favor of something that replaces an error-prone, mindless task with an automated system that takes the errror out.
All that said, there’s every possibility that this just doesn’t work. The company doesn’t list any peer-reviewed, independent studies evaluating the efficacy of their gadget. But presuming it does work, and presuming it comes down in price to something like $50, I’d buy one — two, even, so I could keep one in my travel-bag.
(via Kadrey)