the future of model preparation in dentistryclearly is 3d printing. my name is matt roberts, i run cmr laboratoryin idaho falls, idaho. we are a high-end cosmetic laboratory with a bent towards digital design and digital technology. we've had a heavy switch to digitally aidedtechnologies.
future applications of 3d printing, in the last ten years we started using differentcad programs which of course then quickly led to getting something to produce it with. but printers were like a hundred and fiftythousand dollars and you needed to order three of them so one of them was always workingand the other two were always in the shop
getting fixed. we started with a form two printer that costthirty five hundred instead of going to a thirty-five thousand dollar printer simplybecause i couldn't see a lot of difference in what one did vs the other did. we're seeing very accurate models coming outof our diagnostic wax up a process. the inclusion comes together very nicely withthe imposing model. i'm not seeing any gaps or spaces in therethat would be unexplained and it's about a thirty percent labor savings over doing itwith the wax. you can print beautiful sharp embrasures in-betweenteeth.
the models that are coming out of the formtwo or really great. we have had really good response from ourclients, and i don't think i've had a negative comment back yet from anyone. everybody's excited about it. we have multiple applications that we would like to be using printing technology in the future. the new model materials look really nice. i'm seeing nice fits of the restoration ontothe dies to check the accuracy. we started with one printer and we quicklyfound that we we're running that capacity.
at the price point we can have more of themaround and have another one ready to start printing when that one's full and still inprocess. we immediately picked up a second printer. we now have four of them sitting here. we will have different materials and differentprinters for different applications as well. we can be designing the case within an hourof when it was scanned and have the final
restorations already being manufactured parallelto the models being manufactured. i think the next frontier for us is our modeldepartment and taking and retraining the people to do this digitally and working with a formtwo printer to print removable die models do
all of our model work that way too.
