At simply 22, Connor Gibson is doing one thing he by no means dreamed potential: utilizing his engineering abilities to 3D print dentures for America’s most susceptible folks — and giving them again their sense of dignity within the course of.
“Never, ever, in school did they say, ‘You can design something that could change someone’s life like a denture,’” Gibson advised NCS. “It’s not something immediately on someone’s mind when they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going into engineering.’”
Gibson is the dental expertise supervisor at Remote Area Medical, also called RAM, a big nonprofit group primarily based out of Rockford, Tennessee, that gives free dental, imaginative and prescient and medical care by means of volunteer-powered cellular clinics throughout the United States.
He first started as a volunteer on the nonprofit whereas attending a local people school. He was immediately impressed by the group’s mission to assist the nation’s poor and was decided to determine a means to enhance the pace at which dentures could possibly be delivered.
The drawback?
He knew nothing about dentistry or 3D printing.
“Honestly, if you told me three years ago, this is what I would be doing, I would have called you crazy,” he stated.
Gibson has since outfitted 1000’s of Americans with free dentures. He’s seen burly males with tattoos weep once they first look right into a mirror to see their new smile. The identical goes for aged widows. He calls them “mirror moments.”
The response by no means will get previous.
“That first delivery was really a huge eureka moment,” Gibson stated. “Honestly, it humbled me.”
Reflecting on that first affected person, he paused. “Something that I was able to have a hand in makes a grown man burst into tears,” Gibson stated. “To see that raw, human emotion and just know that I played a change in this person’s life … it’s very humbling, and I’m beyond blessed.”
He added, “Since then, it’s all just like fireworks every weekend. That’s what we’re striving for — to get more and more of those mirror moments. It’s something you can’t truly describe unless you’re there.”
On weekends, when RAM’s pop-up clinics function in full swing, he sleeps in what is called the “mobile digital denture lab,” with its two 3D printers buzzing 24/7 till all sufferers are outfitted. Gibson not too long ago set a private report of 35 dentures printed in a weekend.
The solely irritating factor in regards to the job, he stated, shouldn’t be with the ability to serve everybody. As phrase spreads a few RAM clinic, folks line up by the a whole lot — many instances by the 1000’s — searching for assist for every thing from new glasses to dentures to medical care.
“You have people that are really down on their luck,” he stated. “The reality is we’re all one slip or one fall away from needing two teeth in the front … just to be able to smile again.”
In the US, about 72 million adults, roughly 27% of the inhabitants, wouldn’t have dental insurance coverage. These are the folks RAM seeks to assist. Even for those that have Medicare — the US federal medical health insurance program primarily for folks 65 and older — usually it doesn’t cowl dental providers like routine cleanings, fillings or objects like dentures and implants.
Remote Area Medical has served over 1 million sufferers and supplied almost $240 million in care since its founding in 1985, because of the charity’s 230,000 volunteers.
It was based by the late Stan Brock, the fascinating British cowboy who co-starred in “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” tv collection within the Sixties and ’70s, earlier than making it his life mission to offer free healthcare to underserved communities throughout the United States.
“There’s 50 million people out there that are not getting the care that they need. They simply can’t afford it, and we need to do something about it,” he stated within the award-winning 2020 documentary “Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story.”
RAM’s CEO Chris Hall first joined the charity in 2013. At the time, the group held about 12 occasions a yr. In 2026, RAM plans to host greater than 90 “full-scale medical, dental, and vision clinics.”
“The goal for us is to make someone’s day better,” Hall advised NCS.
He stated Gibson embodies every thing about Brock and his legacy. “Connor never had the opportunity to meet Stan,” Hall stated. “But if Stan was to meet Connor, I think Stan would see someone who truly has the ability to change the world, someone who has passion to help other people.”
The work of the group was featured in April by CBS’s “60 Minutes,” together with Gibson’s ardour to outfit sufferers with dentures. In the weeks for the reason that story aired, Hall stated donations have poured in, together with numerous volunteers wanting to assist.
A producer of 3D printers reached out, he stated, about donating newer and higher machines that can give RAM a fleet of three cellular dental models, as a substitute of its present one lab.
That will enable RAM — and Gibson — to make over 100 dentures in a single weekend — tripling the variety of “mirror moments.”
“That changes the patient’s life,” Hall stated. “But truthfully, it changes that patient’s family. It changes the community around them. It gives them life again.”
It was the documentary on Brock that first impressed Gibson. He noticed the movie at a movie show in 2023 along with his father.
“That movie really opened my eyes when it comes to where our nation is right now,” he stated.
A native of rural Seymour, Tennessee, Gibson had by no means heard of RAM — not to mention that it was headquartered in his yard. He instantly started volunteering, first escorting folks to and from the assorted imaginative and prescient, dental and medical areas.
At the time, Gibson was an engineering pupil at Walter State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee, a city of greater than 33,000 folks — greatest recognized for the filming of the 1981 horror film “The Evil Dead.”
During his spare time, Gibson threw himself into studying as a lot as he may from RAM’s dental specialists. They used the standard methodology to make dentures, involving molding and casting and repeat affected person visits. The entire course of may take as much as three months.
To Gibson, it appeared clunky, antiquated and fully inefficient.
“What’s funny is Connor came to us with no dental experience at all,” stated Hall. “Connor self-taught himself the majority of the dental anatomy and the terms and vocabulary of the dental industry to take this project and move it forward.”
Gibson took the identical strategy with 3D printing. He had skilled in computer-aided design (CAD), studying the best way to use software program to make designs. He felt he was higher suited to make architectural blueprints than dentures.
“I made it my mission and studied up like I was doing a test, studying up on videos and documents — anything I could find on how to make a denture using this specific software and how to 3D print it.”
He finally devised RAM’s Mobile Digital Denture Lab, permitting the group to outfit sufferers the identical weekend and shrinking denture supply from three months to only a few hours and lowering prices within the course of.
When he first got here up with the thought, Gibson stated he received turned away at 3D printing conventions every time he approached distributors and requested if they may need to companion. At a dental conference in Las Vegas a pair years in the past, Hall stated Gibson was acknowledged as a “leading expert in the expansion of digital dentistry.”
“We laughed about it about it afterwards because as we were walking back to our hotel room, he couldn’t even stop in the casino,” Hall stated. “He wasn’t old enough to do that.”
Hall added, “He’s a truly wonderful person, and we’re honored to be in the same room.”
Not the kind to surrender, Gibson secured RAM’s first printers by means of grants.
Gibson isn’t the primary individual to 3D print dentures. However, he’s credited with devising the primary cellular denture lab within the United States, permitting easy accessibility and care for those that want RAM’s assist.
“Never did I have the chance to step back and realize until that moment of ‘whoa, this is the bigger picture of how I can utilize my engineering degree to be good for our nation and for my community,’” he stated. “With the mobile denture lab, it lets us bridge that gap and meet patients where they are at.”
He hopes to get the brand new labs up and working by yr’s finish so he can provide much more folks their smiles again — in any case, he repeated, “we’re all one slip or one fall away.”