Stratasys makes a big move into the dental market.
The dental industry is one of those perfect markets for 3D printing: it is required everywhere by everyone, it requires custom-made parts for each job, and the costs of the parts is already expected to be relatively high by customers.
There aren’t that many markets of that type, with others being aerospace, rockets, medical implants and possibly automotive. It’s not surprising to see several 3D printer manufacturers focusing on the dental market. 3D Systems, for example, has a large chunk of their business coming from the production of dental aligners.
One company that hasn’t made that big a splash in the dental market is Stratasys, but that seems to have changed with the introduction this week of the new DentaJet XL.
Stratasys has leveraged their PolyJet technology to serve the dental industry. Polyjet involves selective drops of photopolymer resin, with a UV-curing pass on each layer. The company first used this technology to mix model and support materials, but then added the ability to print in multiple colors, then in multiple textures. Now they’ve tweaked the materials to permit production of dental appliances.
PolyJet is quite mature at this stage, and Stratasys has been able to build a dental 3D printer that can very rapidly produce parts. As examples, they list the following:
- Up to 16 implant cases (surgical guide and model) in 6 hours 30 minutes
- Up to 102 crown & bridge models in 4 hours 31 minutes
- Up to 28 orthodontic models in 6 hours 37 minutes
- Up to 36 aligner arches in 2 hours 14 minutes
Those are quite amazing throughput statistics for a single machine.
There’s quite a bit of automation involved in this machine. Stratasys explains:
“The new PolyJet multi-material 3D printer is designed to run in a production setting with minimal human intervention. With advanced software print prep and print management features, as well as unattended printing and curing, labs can reduce up to 90 percent of their labor costs.”
One notable feature is high capacity resin cartridges, which hold up to 4kg of material. This dramatically reduces operator time required to swap cartridges.
They’ve also configured new print modes, including “Super High Speed Mode”, which can produce parts far more quickly and at reduced cost. Stratasys said the cost per part can be as much as 67% lower.
There’s also considerable work in the software area, as they have enhanced the software to allow for simplified print job preparation.
These features together should form a compelling offer for dental labs. In my discussions with dentists about the use of 3D printing, it’s pretty clear that the barrier to participation is mostly the time required to learn and operate the equipment. Stratasys seems to have knocked down that barrier directly with the DentaJet XL.
Via Stratays
