When a patient complains of a tumor for example in the lower jaw in many occasions the treatment is to remove the affected piece and joint the remaining parts of the jaw using bone plate and eventually we reconstruct the defect with bone graft
We were used to use stock plates and bend it manually in the operating room during the surgery. Now we can design a bone plate to accurately fit on the bony pieces and fix the jaw to the exact position as before taking the piece of the jaw bone out.
We mill or 3D print the plat before surgery
Here is an example made with shaper but actually in some steps I had to use blender
I selected a piece of the mandible face then extruded with the required thickness of the bone plate to use it for intersection of the bone plate. I did that because I failed to make the bone plate fit on the anatomy of the mandible not on a grid or plane
I could do it with shaper alone. I made the plate very thick then subtracted it from the mandible. Then I moved the mandile out with the required plate thickness then I intersected the plate from the moved mandible
