Health 7 min read
This 22-year-old engineer 3D prints dentures to give low-income Americans their smiles back
By Wayne Drash
Jun 22, 2026
Six photos: How a 22-year-old is restoring smiles with 3D printing
6 photos
Connor Gibson is a 22-year-old engineer at Remote Area Medical (RAM), a large nonprofit provider of free dental, vision and medical care to America’s most vulnerable population. He taught himself how to design dentures on his computer, then print them on 3D printers. Click to learn more. Remote Area Medical
At just 22, Connor Gibson is doing something he never dreamed possible: using his engineering skills to 3D print dentures for America’s most vulnerable people — and giving them back their sense of dignity in the process.
“Never, ever, in school did they say, ‘You can design something that could change someone’s life like a denture,’” Gibson told CNN. “It’s not something immediately on someone’s mind when they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going into engineering.’”
Gibson is the dental technology manager at Remote Area Medical, also known as RAM, a large nonprofit organization based out of Rockford, Tennessee, that provides free dental, vision and medical care through volunteer-powered mobile clinics across the United States.
He first began as a volunteer at the nonprofit while attending a local community college. He was instantly inspired by the organization’s mission to help the nation’s poor and was determined to figure out a way to improve the speed at which dentures could be delivered.
The problem?
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 said.
‘Beyond blessed’
Gibson has since outfitted thousands of Americans with free dentures. He’s seen burly men with tattoos weep when they first look into a mirror to see their new smile. The same goes for elderly widows. He calls them “mirror moments.”
The reaction never gets old.
“That first delivery was really a huge eureka moment,” Gibson said. “Honestly, it humbled me.”
Gibson fits the 3D printed teeth into the gum component as part of the process of making a new set of dentures in the Mobile Digital Dental Lab for a Remote Area Medical (RAM) patient. Remote Area Medical / Eric Hutchinson
Reflecting on that first patient, he paused. “Something that I was able to have a hand in makes a grown man burst into tears,” Gibson said. “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 operate in full swing, he sleeps in what is known as the “mobile digital denture lab,” with its two 3D printers humming 24/7 until all patients are outfitted. Gibson recently set a personal record of 35 dentures printed in a weekend.
The only frustrating thing about the job, he said, is not being able to serve everyone. As word spreads about a RAM clinic, people line up by the hundreds — many times by the thousands — seeking help for everything from new glasses to dentures to medical care.
“You have people that are really down on their luck,” he said. “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 population, do not have dental insurance. These are the people RAM seeks to help. Even for those who have Medicare — the US federal health insurance program primarily for people 65 and older — in most cases it doesn’t cover dental services like routine cleanings, fillings or items like dentures and implants.
Carrying out Stan Brock’s legacy
Remote Area Medical has served over 1 million patients and provided nearly $240 million in care since its founding in 1985, thanks to the charity’s 230,000 volunteers.
It was founded by the late Stan Brock, the captivating British cowboy who co-starred in “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” television series in the 1960s and ’70s, before making it his life mission to provide free healthcare to underserved communities across 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 said in 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 organization held about 12 events a year. In 2026, RAM plans to host more than 90 “full-scale medical, dental, and vision clinics.”
“The goal for us is to make someone’s day better,” Hall told CNN.
Gibson, left, was a community college student when he first began volunteering for RAM and realized he could help the organization. Remote Area Medical
He said Gibson embodies everything about Brock and his legacy. “Connor never had the opportunity to meet Stan,” Hall said. “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 organization was featured in April by CBS’s “60 Minutes,” including Gibson’s passion to outfit patients with dentures. In the weeks since the story aired, Hall said donations have poured in, along with countless volunteers wanting to help.
A manufacturer of 3D printers reached out, he said, about donating newer and better machines that will give RAM a fleet of three mobile dental units, instead of its current one lab.
That will allow RAM — and Gibson — to make over 100 dentures in a single weekend — tripling the number of “mirror moments.”
“That changes the patient’s life,” Hall said. “But truthfully, it changes that patient’s family. It changes the community around them. It gives them life again.”
‘I made it my mission’
It was the documentary on Brock that first inspired Gibson. He saw the film at a movie theater in 2023 with his father.
“That movie really opened my eyes when it comes to where our nation is right now,” he said.
A native of rural Seymour, Tennessee, Gibson had never heard of RAM — let alone that it was headquartered in his backyard. He immediately began volunteering, first escorting people to and from the various vision, dental and medical areas.
At the time, Gibson was an engineering student at Walter State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee, a town of more than 33,000 people — best known for the filming of the 1981 horror movie “The Evil Dead.”
Gibson self-taught himself about 3D printing. When a patient’s images are uploaded into a computer file, he can send them to the 3D printer to make dentures that fit each individual patient. Remote Area Medical
During his spare time, Gibson threw himself into learning as much as he could from RAM’s dental experts. They used the traditional method to make dentures, involving molding and casting and repeat patient visits. The whole process could take up to three months.
To Gibson, it seemed clunky, antiquated and completely inefficient.
“What’s funny is Connor came to us with no dental experience at all,” said 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 same approach with 3D printing. He had trained in computer-aided design (CAD), learning how to use software to make designs. He felt he was better suited to make architectural blueprints than dentures.
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“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 ultimately devised RAM’s Mobile Digital Denture Lab, allowing the organization to outfit patients the same weekend and shrinking denture delivery from three months to just a few hours and reducing costs in the process.
When he first came up with the idea, Gibson said he got turned away at 3D printing conventions whenever he approached vendors and asked if they might want to partner. At a dental convention in Las Vegas a couple years ago, Hall said Gibson was recognized as a “leading expert in the expansion of digital dentistry.”
Gibson grabs a newly printed set of teeth from the 3D printer in RAM’s mobile denture lab in preparation for assembling a set of dentures for a patient. Remote Area Medical / Eric Hutchinson
“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 said. “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.”
Bridging the gap
Not the type to give up, Gibson secured RAM’s first printers through grants.
Gibson isn’t the first person to 3D print dentures. However, he is credited with devising the first mobile denture lab in the United States, allowing easy access and care for those who need RAM’s help.
“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 said. “With the mobile denture lab, it lets us bridge that gap and meet patients where they are at.”
He hopes to get the new labs up and running by year’s end so he can give even more people their smiles back — after all, he repeated, “we’re all one slip or one fall away.”
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