DISCLAIMER: I'm not a doctor, I'm not an orthodontist, I'm just a random guy on the internet with a slightly recessed maxilla. You're personally responsible for your choices, actions and results, this guide is for informational purposes only. ____________________________________________________________________________
In this post I will explain how easy and cheap it is to effectively pull your maxilla forward/upward with a homemade device, obtaining so a more aesthetic facial structure. ____________________________________________________________________________
1. MAKE A MOLD OF YOUR UPPER PALATE.
You can do it yourself ordering the materials online, OR you can just go to any local dental laboratory and let them do it for you professionally for less then $10.
2. BUILD THE INFRA-ORAL APPLIANCE.
Build the infra-oral appliance around your mold. Again, you can build it yourself, OR you can go to any local professional Orthodontic laboratory where a qualified person can make it for less than $40.
You need to give them clear instructions: -It doesn't have to tip the teeth in any way shape or form. -It has to be shaped and fit perfectly to your upper palate. -It needs a facebow inserted inside as in the photo.
Extra requirement for comfort: -Tell them to coat the central part with a softer material like dental silicone, because I realized the acrylic it's just too hard on the internal walls of your mouth when pressed for long periods of time.
3. BUILD THE FACEPULLER.
You need to order a neck brace on Amazon/eBay for less than $10. Two steel brackets, as in the photo, and 4 bolts with 4 nuts. -Make two holes on the front of the neck brace. You can use a drill or heat up a screwdriver with your kitchen stove. -Assemble the brackets on the neck brace.
4. NOW YOU CAN WEAR IT
Use simple rubber bands (or even springs) to hook the appliance to the facepuller.
Below a blurred photo of me while wearing it.
HOW MUCH DO I WEAR IT? HOW MUCH FORCE TO APPLY?
In this study researchers applied 500g of forward force to the palate of adult rhesus monkeys for 4 months and saw drastic changes in their facial bone structure.
I try to wear it as much as possible (12+ hours every day) and I'm currently applying 1,5kg of force. However, it depends on how comfortable one can be with the appliance. The goal here is to apply enough force to create the maxilla displacement, but not so much to not be able to sleep while wearing it
Thanks for sharing! I'm impressed with the craftsmanship! I'm not sure how much effect this kind of extra-oral traction will have without some other method (e.g. MSE/MARPE) to disrupt the perimaxillary sutures. A similar design, covering the palate and wrapping behind the maxillary tuberosity, was posted on facepulling.com back in 2016. When I decided that my schwartz expander was loading too much of my extra-oral traction onto my teeth rather than my palate, I debated making something like this myself:
I am beginning to rethink my extra-oral traction strategy. I want to go back and read about that guy who made a DIY facepulling mouthpiece without any connection to the teeth. Here is his website ( https://www.facepulling.com/ ). I think I remember some posts about it on the BTM forum. There haven't been any recent updates or details about what material he used to make the pink framework for the mouthpiece. I'm guessing maybe it is the thermoplastic sometimes used for partial dentures and fake costume teeth.
I have decided to uncouple my extra-oral traction from my palate expansion. Originally I thought they might have a synergistic effect, but as I mentioned in the post above, the traction seems to be loaded on the teeth rather than the bone. It feels entirely different for me to put my thumbs against the expander on my palate and pull up and forward than it does to pull up and forward on the wires that have to pass between the teeth to transfer the force to the acrylic. Maybe after I complete my palate expansion, I will develop a DIY mouthpiece that engages the palate. Until then I think correct oral posture will be most effective at shifting my maxilla up and forward.
Making the mouthpiece proved to be too challenging for me and I became skeptical it would achieve the desired effect without something like MSE/MARPE to disrupt the sutures. To my knowledge, the facepulling.com case never reported remarkable results. Still, I like the idea of applying force against the palate and behind the maxillary tuberosity rather than against the teeth.
Thanks for sharing! I'm impressed with the craftsmanship! I'm not sure how much effect this kind of extra-oral traction will have without some other method (e.g. MSE/MARPE) to disrupt the perimaxillary sutures. A similar design, covering the palate and wrapping behind the maxillary tuberosity, was posted on facepulling.com back in 2016. When I decided that my schwartz expander was loading too much of my extra-oral traction onto my teeth rather than my palate, I debated making something like this myself:
I am beginning to rethink my extra-oral traction strategy. I want to go back and read about that guy who made a DIY facepulling mouthpiece without any connection to the teeth. Here is his website ( https://www.facepulling.com/ ). I think I remember some posts about it on the BTM forum. There haven't been any recent updates or details about what material he used to make the pink framework for the mouthpiece. I'm guessing maybe it is the thermoplastic sometimes used for partial dentures and fake costume teeth.
I have decided to uncouple my extra-oral traction from my palate expansion. Originally I thought they might have a synergistic effect, but as I mentioned in the post above, the traction seems to be loaded on the teeth rather than the bone. It feels entirely different for me to put my thumbs against the expander on my palate and pull up and forward than it does to pull up and forward on the wires that have to pass between the teeth to transfer the force to the acrylic. Maybe after I complete my palate expansion, I will develop a DIY mouthpiece that engages the palate. Until then I think correct oral posture will be most effective at shifting my maxilla up and forward.
Making the mouthpiece proved to be too challenging for me and I became skeptical it would achieve the desired effect without something like MSE/MARPE to disrupt the sutures. To my knowledge, the facepulling.com case never reported remarkable results. Still, I like the idea of applying force against the palate and behind the maxillary tuberosity rather than against the teeth.
So you think sutures need to be disrupted before being able to protract despite this guy using 1.5 kg pulling force? Will be interesting to see if he gets results he only started just over 2 months ago
So you think sutures need to be disrupted before being able to protract despite this guy using 1.5 kg pulling force? Will be interesting to see if he gets results he only started just over 2 months ago
That's my speculation. Considering how removable acrylic expanders don't seem capable of disarticulating the midpalatal suture, at least in my experience, I'm doubtful that extra-oral traction could achieve displacement along the perimaxillary sutures in adults without some other method to disrupt articulation. Maybe there's some limited remodeling that could be achieved, but it seems like this kind of change is especially susceptible to relapse.
Also, it's interesting that the "CopeAndRope" OP on that lookism thread, after initially saying his palate was wide enough to not require bone-anchored expansion, wrote on November 2 ( https://looksmax.me/threads/designing-a-new-orthodontic-appliance.54974/post-1050794 ) in response to a request for an update about his progress with his device:
CopeAndRope said:
EternalLearner said:
@CopeAndRope is this still upto date? Any more progress? A device like that would be great
It's on hold because I'm currently consulting to get the MSE+FP
So maybe he's also decided that he needs something to get the ball rolling.
After talking about making an appliance like this since 2016, I finally got around to trying it. I don't expect it to do anything groundbreaking since there haven't been any great results reported from either the facepulling.com or the copeandrope designs. Still, I wanted to build something to allow me to continue with my reverse pull headgear after the arms are cut off of my MSE. Maybe I'll have more luck since the MSE should have disrupted my perimaxillary sutures and using this device will bypass the concerns that the MSE loads its traction onto the molar bands attached to soft metal arms. For anyone interested in making their own, my only pointer would be to make sure the section that wraps behind your maxillary tuberosity is rigid and doesn't flex at all when you load traction. My first attempt was giving me some pain on one side. I initially assumed that I needed to remove material from that area, but then I realized the problem was actually that it was bending under tension and that was causing the pain. Removing the spots causing pressure had only weakened it more. So I remade it with a higher gauge wire framework. If your acrylic was thick enough it might not need the wire, but it has to be relatively thin in that section to comfortably close your teeth together. I've tested it and it seems to be working well now. Hopefully I'll be able to use it through the night tonight. Anyway, good luck and let me know if you try it yourself!
If you do wind up using it, can you experiment with expanding at the semi-rapid rate of 1/8 mm per day (to soften and disarticulate sutures) and also using an intermittent pulsating force rather than a constant one for pulling the face (like 1-2 hertz)? I think the combination of that rate and intermittent cyclical force is the key to moving the maxilla forward by a larger amount. You would need to build some mechanism to apply intermittent force, I'd be willing to brainstorm with you if you're down to try it.
If you do wind up using it, can you experiment with expanding at the semi-rapid rate of 1/8 mm per day (to soften and disarticulate sutures) and also using an intermittent pulsating force rather than a constant one for pulling the face (like 1-2 hertz)? I think the combination of that rate and intermittent cyclical force is the key to moving the maxilla forward by a larger amount. You would need to build some mechanism to apply intermittent force, I'd be willing to brainstorm with you if you're down to try it.
I made something similar to the copeandrope design @goblin_slayer posted ( https://looksmax.org/threads/how-to-pull-your-maxilla-forward-definitive-guide.45691/ ). Since I just completed MSE expansion, my DIY appliance doesn't have an expansion screw like the facepulling.com design. While expanding, I used reverse pull headgear attached to the MSE, and I think I got at least a couple millimeters of forward change. Hopefully my perimaxillary sutures are still somewhat malleable, but I won't be expanding while using the DIY appliance. I am intrigued by your idea of pulsating the traction. How would you accomplish that?
In theory the traction should either be kinda like an expansion screw itself or be pulsated.
If we are going with something working like an expansion screw, think about it, in transverse expansion you're separating two halves of the maxilla by splitting or stretching (depending on the expansion rate) the mid palatal suture. Why can't this work in a similar manner against the perimaxillary sutures if we assume if their sutural dynamics are the same, thereby achieving something that can resemble distraction osteogenesis?
Imagine the following picture as a symbolic representation of this concept
Assuming this has decently fixed position in your palate and there is absolute anchorage from the neck brace, here is a quick brainstorm:
What would connect the mouth piece to the neck brace would be some kind of screw that can be turned around maybe 1/8 mm a day which would therefore be force applied to the maxilla. It can get tricky due to anchorage and anchorage points moving.
If we want some kind of force pulsation, perhaps elastics can help here. The elastic-containing portion of the neck brace can oscillate back and forth with some sort of electric mechanism that controls this frequency-wise:
I think true midface distraction requires a fixed anchorage like the halo brace that gets screwed into the skull, which is only used for severe cases. For removeable braces that are only worn for a fraction of the day, some kind of elastic is required for comfort. I've tried to use as much force as tolerable, approaching the effect of a rigid anchorage. I suppose some kind of oscillating mechanism could be attached to the brace to pulse the traction, but I'm not really handy with electronics and I don't know what could be used.
@mafiagang I think distraction devices to move the maxilla forwards is not used without surgery because newton's basic law of force.when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction.So if someone tried splitting zygomaticotemporal suture with a distraction device or something stronger,it will definetely apply a force to maxilla in forward direction and let's say if it was able to split zygomaticotemporal suture the way mse does,it will also push back the zygomatic bones and temporal bone.That might damage some important things there but I don't know what could that sort of thing damage.This is the way mse works also it applies force onto both sides of the palate in equal forces and in the middle of the palate there is the suture and it seperates after a while because of the force that was applied onto both sides
The distraction device is used for extereme cases with surgery because surgery seperates the maxilla first and then afterwards the device is activated.So it still applies force onto the bones on the back but its not really important now because the maxilla has been seperated by surgery anyways.So the tension doesn't build up,it only affects the maxilla,not the other bones.I hope I was able to tell what I was trying to tell
Yes fixed anchorage is obviously ideal but isn't feasible unless you have true midface hypoplasia. Not entirely sure about the oscillating mechanism will have to think.
