The advent of 3D printing offers benefits and opportunities for dental lab technicians, yet overcoming technical and educational hurdles remains key to widespread adoption. With education and training, the use of 3D printable materials could become as widely used as milling.
How are 3D printable materials used?
With 3D printing in dentistry, we mostly utilize a light-cured resin from a vat. We gravitated toward this form of printing for the higher-resolution capabilities needed for clinical prosthetics. The downside is it is very hard and unrealistic to get a multi-dynamic functioning material from a single vat of resin. This is where we struggle with hard and soft properties in one prosthetic, or multi colors and translucency in a single prosthetic. I get to utilize 3D printing in a variety of ways. Through our lab, we mostly rely on 3D printing for model work, and the rest are prototypes, temporaries, and splints.
What are some of the benefits of 3D printable materials?
I love the fact that 3D printing allows us to have less waste than milling, less labor, and produce faster end products. Every case we do has very high standards with very little room for error and only one chance to get it right. 3D printing incurs almost zero costs to the lab to provide temporaries not just for fitting, but also to see if the patient is happy with this investment. This is an option we never had before without lots of extra time, labor, or costs. To me, that is providing a good service.
What are some of the challenges?
As with anything new, there is a learning curve that has yet to infiltrate dentistry. The main challenge is that the person closest to the patient, the one on the end of the production line, is the one navigating and troubleshooting this new technology. Just like with porcelain-fused-to-metal and zirconia, it is going to take about 10 years to become more comfortable using new materials. The best way to address this is with education and training.
KEY TAKEAWAY
From improving patient satisfaction to reducing waste, 3D printing offers exciting benefits for dentistry, but the road to mastery requires time and training.
Jed Archibald, CDT, is the owner and founder of Archibald Esthetics, LLC, and Archibald Digital.
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Jed Archibald, CDT
