Our History

2015

The first micro Bender was unveiled at the Interwire trade show in Atlanta in 2015. It was the first small tabletop machine worldwide to be capable of producing orthodontic wire retainers.

AOS revealed a small tabletop machine powered by a 120V plug with the technology and “brains” of a large industrial machine. The project received immediate attention from many micro-bending markets, with the Medical and Dental markets being the strongest.

The market introduced a considerable challenge: No software was available to produce the 3D solid model of the wire to be made! That was the time to start developing automatic software to create the wire models needed as input to the micro Bender.

2017

Although an excellent accomplishment for being the first wire-bending machine in the orthodontic world, it was desired to be more user-friendly. AOS software engineers developed new CAD/CAM tools through beta testing and close collaboration with dental labs. With the creation of these new tools, we minimized the time burden of the digital design for manufacturing the orthodontic retainers, which is customized for every production.

An updated micro Bender was presented at the IDS 2017 trade show in Cologne, Germany, and AAO’s 117th Annual Session in San Diego, CA, USA, along with the first release of the JawDraw® software. JawDraw® was introduced as a user-friendly platform where the user can “draw” a wire path around a solid Jaw model and translate the data into machine language, allowing Micro Bender to produce a wire part automatically and accurately.

2019

After years of testing and collaborating with Orthodontic labs and technicians, our engineers realized that we had to automate the design process further while lowering the knowledge requirements of the users. A new version of JawDraw® was released, allowing the user to select appliance types from a template library and develop the wire form automatically with the assistance of a live wizard.

A sixth revision of the microBender was released with updated tooling, automatic material and tool calibration, and material presented on a spool. This allowed for minimizing setup times and eliminating wire scrap.

AOS debuted the latest model at the 2019 AAO (American Association of Orthodontists) annual session in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

The MB v6, a tabletop servo-operated machine along with JawDraw® software, will “enhance” the Orthodontic Appliance Industry, easing the manual and labor-intensive orthodontic appliance operations. Although the Micro Bender cannot replace a good technician 100%, it can produce the retainers in 1/10th of the time (or faster) with immaculate accuracy, much better than what the human hand can accomplish.

AOS’s development exponentially increases accuracy while slashing production times to a fraction of the cost. Besides the technology included, our accountants estimate 6-12 months of ROI.

As we enter 2022, our newly redesigned MB1-V7 is flying out the door. Our team and operations in Tampa continue to expand to support our rapidly growing demand.

Evidently, the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on our industry. Laboratories continue to face the same issue of being unable to find skilled technicians willing and able to bend wire by hand all day, every day manually. Wire bending is complex and requires a lot of training, patience, and investment to become proficient.

The MicroBender’s simplicity and ease of use/ intuitiveness of JawDraw® means that anyone with basic computer knowledge can create high-quality appliance wires with just a few hours of training. The continuous development of JawDraw, machine tooling, sourcing the best materials, and excellent customer support allows us to offer the orthodontic world a better, more accurate, and more cost-effective solution to satisfy your lab’s wire bending needs and help grow production.