You may have heard of digital dentistry. It sounds so futuristic. What exactly is it?
It's quite simple. It is the process of converting information into a digital (ie computer readable) format.
Take, for example, the process of making a new bridge for a patient. In the digital process, his jaw is first scanned with an intraoral 3D scanner, or a plaster cast of the patient's jaw impression is scanned with a scanner. Then this data is uploaded to the dental software, in which the dental laboratory technician creates a 3D model of the future bridge so that it copies the original teeth as faithfully as possible and fits the overall bite as well as possible.
To verify the correctness of this 3D model, the laboratory technician uses a faithful model of the patient's jaws printed on a 3D printer. The price of the jaw model is CZK 400. If the laboratory technician does not have his own 3D printer, he can use our custom 3D printing service and have this model within 48 hours.
The bridge itself is also printed - made of ceramic composite - on the same day that we receive the data from the laboratory. We at cotu use material from the leading German manufacturer Detax, because it can be printed in the light spectrum of 385 nm. This means that the print will retain its biocompatibility and remain classified as a Class IIA medical device. It does not endanger the patient's health in any way.
The CROWNTEC material from the Swiss manufacturer of dental filling materials Saremco Dental AG is a revolutionary new product on the market. You can print crowns or artificial teeth that last in the patient's mouth for up to 5 years. This solves a fundamental problem for dental laboratories and dentists: to be able to print from a material that does not degrade over time and retains the same physical properties and is also biocompatible - i.e. absolutely harmless to health.
No one in the Czech Republic prints in this way except us. Most 3D printing providers, 3D printer vendors, and even dental labs that have purchased 3D printers do not give the light spectrum any thought.
They thus expose patients to a unknown risk resulting from the fact that they wear temporary replacements made of improperly treated materials for several weeks. At the same time, photosensitive resins for 3D printing are complex and relatively new materials, and their long-term effects on the human body have not been sufficiently studied.
This fact, together with the price of the dental printer and the difficulty of its operation, undoubtedly cause that in a third of Czech laboratories, teeth are still produced using the old "analog" method. This is demanding manual work, which, moreover, can never come close to digital in terms of accuracy. Modern methods can save up to half of the time and human effort.
With dental 3D printing, it is possible to produce:
- invisible braces
- splints
- custom mouthguards for athletes
- transplant templates
- removable prostheses
- various models - either parts of the jaws or the whole for orthodontics and prosthetics.
Digitization is becoming a natural part of the work of dental laboratories and dentists. It will be as natural as a dentist working on a computer and not typing on a typewriter.
Dental laboratories have a choice: invest in their own equipment or purchase 3D prints from a professional dental 3D printing provider. Because we only sell equipment and materials that we ourselves use every day for our work, we are able to provide our customers with unique advice on additive manufacturing on the Czech market. Whatever problem you have, we have certainly solved it ourselves. We will advise you on how to introduce additive manufacturing to your laboratory so that the transition to it is quick and as painless as possible.
We believe that together we will be able to speed up the introduction of digitization in dental laboratories and thus increase their productivity and patient satisfaction.
