DESIGN AND REALIZATION OF A PRECISE AND FLEXIBLE CONTROL CARD FOR A DENTAL PROSTHESIS BAKING FURNACE BY USING FPGA

In this study, a dental prosthesis baking furnace, which is used in baking of the dental prosthesis in the dental laboratories, has been explored in terms of the control unit design and application with FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array - FPGA). Governing of the furnace has been realized by an XC3S700A-4FG484A FPGA integrated circuit which was produced by Xilinx firm. During the design process of this electronic control card, VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language - VHDL) program and algorithm, which are used fewer gates in developing the FPGA ICs and have high speed of hardware and low power consumption have been developed. In any dental prosthesis baking furnace, a good timing, linear and stabilized operation, sensitive temperature and pressure monitoring and flexible usage are of vital. With the proposed control card for first time, the FPGA which contains the above-mentioned features temperature and pressure values have been adjusted at a desired order and process of baking has been implemented on time, successfully. Thus, Prosthesis which baked in many precise operation parameters (i.e. temperature, pressure) during the process has been observed to be long-lived and endurable due to this control card and software.