According to a recent report by market intelligence group CONTEXT, dentistry makes up over one fifth of the end market for professional polymer 3D printers (5,000 USD upwards). The accessibility of desktop machines and the resolution of resin-based technologies have earned additive a solid user base in the dental community. It’s why early on in the fight against COVID-19, we saw a UK based network of 13,000 dentists with access to 3D printers – thought to be one of the largest concentration of machines outside of the engineering sector – rally together to apply its temporarily redundant resources for the production of PPE.
So, with the dental 3D printing market poised to reach 9.5 billion USD by 2027, it’s no surprise that 3D printer manufacturers are investing heavily in this area, whether through dedicated business units or partnerships with device manufacturers.
Applications for 3D printers in the dental lab or office are extensive. “We print implant models, crown and bridge models, all that fun stuff,” Oscar Buenrostro, Model Shop, Milling & 3D Printing Supervisor for California-based dental solutions provider DenMat, recently told TCT. “We use it for pretty much every product we have in the lab.”
The company has been working with 3D printing for several years, experimenting with a number of systems before installing a 3D Systems NextDent 5100 system last year. The machine has now become an essential component of the lab, which runs 24/7, producing restorative devices, implants, aligners, mouth guards, and more, including those for flagship brands like Lumineers and Snap-On-Smile.
“Before 3D printing came into play, we used to pour the models with actual stone," Buenrostro said, elaborating on the traditional, often messy, approach to producing orthodontic models, which the company now does with additive manufacturing. "Now we can just scan the impression and design what we need to design on the model, whatever specifications they want us to make. Then we 3D print it. We avoid the whole model pouring and dealing with the stone and the dry time. It has definitely helped us out a lot, especially all the resins that [3D Systems] came out with. Now you have different colours of resin so that's pretty cool too.”
3D Systems formally released its Figure 4 technology in 2017. It’s a speedy AM process which had been waiting in the wings for several years, based on a patent by stereolithography inventor Chuck Hull, and brought to fruition when the materials science finally caught up with the technology’s promise. Those materials have been crucial to its adoption in the dental department, bolstered by 3D Systems’ acquisition of dental material company Vertex-Global Holding B.V., from where the NextDent system gets its namesake. The acquisition sought to combine 3D Systems’ Figure 4 technology with NextDent’s advanced 3D printing materials to enable what the company described at the time as “breakthrough digital production solutions for the dental industry”. Since then, 3D Systems has released a couple of specialised Figure 4 platforms aimed at specific industries, including the Figure 4 Jewellery models and the NextDent 5100 for dental applications.
While this acquisition allowed materials innovations to grow, resulting in the launch of a slew of biocompatible resins including last year's NextDent Denture 3D+ material which is said to enable dental labs to cost-effectively produce dentures up to 75% faster, a recently announced software feature has proven to be a game changer for labs like DenMat.
Back in February, 3D Systems introduced a new auto-stacking feature to its 3D Sprint software, designed to optimise the workflow for 3D printing orthodontic models. The tool provides one-click automated preparation and placement of models on the build plate including smart nesting and proprietary support structures, giving dental labs and clinics the ability to produce up to 30 orthodontic models in one print or 120 models over an eight-hour period. For DenMat, Buenrostro explained, that feature alone has resulted in increased productivity and reduced consumption of materials and labour.
“Before we tried the stacking options, we were getting about 48 models in an eight-hour shift,” Buenrostro explained. “Once we went into the stacking option, we actually went from 48 models in an eight-hour shift to 96. So it really boosts up our production.
“Not only the production side but also [there] was less labour being spent on the actual software end. [With] the stack option, they made it where you just click one simple button and it stacks the models for you, adds supports, hollows them for you. The next step is it's ready to go on the printer.”
According to stats from 3D Systems, the combination of NextDent 5100 3D printer, NextDent Model 2.0 material and a proprietary, high precision stacked build in 3D Sprint, allowed for each platform of 26 orthodontic models to be produced in 2 hours and 11 min - that's 96 models over an eight hour shift including all preparation and post-processing time.
With a high adoption rate and production volumes like these, perhaps most evident in the clear aligners market which are being printed in their thousands by established brands like Align Technology every week, dental is somewhat of a trailblazer for additive, particularly mass customisation. Though, like most established industries and processes, not everyone is ready to move away from those traditional ways of doing things.
“I think there's a lot of people who are probably scared to go in 3D printing because maybe they had a bad experience with a 3D printer and they just stopped […] A lot of businesses don't like using it because it's digital, they still want to go the traditional way,” Buenrostro says, likening the adoption of 3D printers to the push for intra-oral scanners over the last decade, which despite clear benefits for dentist and patient, are not yet omnipresent in the industry.
He adds: “[3D printing] has really helped us. It has led us to make our turnaround time quicker and we're able to manufacture more with the 3D printer than the traditional way.”
