Japan-based Roland has introduced a new dental 3D printer – and an entirely new brand.
Roland, if you don’t know, is a very large, almost 60-year old Japanese company that produces many types of electronic equipment. The company manufactures primarily musical gear, but also video and audio equipment. Their Roland DGA brand produces a number of printers and cutting equipment for various purposes.
It is within this line, Roland DGA, where their 3D printing equipment emerged. However, there seems to have been a big change recently in their strategy.
When I first encountered Roland a few years ago, they had been making desktop 3D printers, scanners and CNC mills for hobbyists. Perhaps at the time they pursued that market believing it would explode, as many others did then. However, that wasn’t the case and from what I understand now the company is no longer focusing on that market.
Instead I’ve seen several forays into more industrial-style 3D printers from the company such as their ceramic 3D printer currently under development.
They are likely correct in their strategy shift, as it is the same I’ve seen in several other 3D printer manufacturers. But one difference is that the smaller 3D printer manufacturers tended to focus on a particular application area, where they could leverage marketing efforts. Some chose the education market, for example. Others focus on automotive or aerospace.
Now it seems that Roland has picked the dental market, as their new brand, DGSHAPE, is specifically for dental applications.
Within that brand they also announced a new device, the DWP-80S. It’s a resin-based machine that uses dual DLP projectors to solidify the resin. Like most dental devices, it doesn’t have a particularly large build volume at 80 x 80 x 80mm.
But it’s not the specs that are of most interest on this device, as you could likely find many other options that meet or exceed those of the DWP-80S.
No, what I find most interesting is their focus on ease of use. The description of this machine includes the word “easy” many times, and their ease-of-use focus is not simply on the operation of the machine. There is much focus on the effort taken by a dental technician to run the software on the device. See these features:
- Automatic Positioning
- Automatic Support Generation
- Error Detection and 3D Mesh Healing
- Cost-Effective Resin Calculation
- 2 Year Comprehensive Customer Support and Service
This machine is all about making life easy for dental technicians, which is possibly the most important feature being sought by purchasers.
Why? I have the impression that there are enormous numbers of dental businesses that don’t currently leverage advanced technologies, simply because they are unsure of what to do. I’ve heard of other 3D printer companies literally recruiting dentists to assist breaking into that market, and I bet Roland has found the same approach here.
If you make things easy, things happen.
Via Roland / DGSHAPE
