Stratasys Presents Two New Dental Additive Manufacturing Systems

It wasn’t that long ago that dental services were barely a blip on the additive manufacturing (AM) radar. Now, using digital design and AM to produce products for dentists has become a market all its own. The benefits of AM for dentists include improved accuracy and faster production times, along with the potential for reduced costs.

Stratasys has added two new entries to its range of dental 3D printers with the launch of the CrownWorx and FrameWorx systems. The CrownWorx has been designed to build wax-ups for crowns, bridges and other dental restorations, while the FrameWorx targets wax-ups for partial dentures.

The CrownWorx 3D Printer builds crown, bridge, and coping wax-ups. Courtesy of Stratasys.

Stratasys has also launched two new materials alongside the systems. TrueCast has been formulated to behave exactly like wax for investment-casting and is used by CrownWorx for crowns and bridges, and by FrameWorx for partial dentures. TrueSupport is automatically deposited during the build process where necessary to provide support for 3D printed wax-ups, and melts away at low temperatures.

“These wax 3D printers and new materials are an ideal fit for small labs interested in upgrading dental casting technology,” says Stratasys director of global dental, Avi Cohen. “We believe dental labs adopting these 3D printers will benefit from the automated and digitized workflows, enabling them to cut costs while producing more restorations. These systems complement our broad system portfolio, which includes large dental 3D printers.”

Both new systems have similar specs with a build envelope of 152.4 x 152.4 x 50.8 mm (6 x 6 x 2 in.) and a horizontal layer thickness of 50 microns. They are compatible with Windows 7 and require LAN-TCP/IP connectivity.

The FrameWorx system builds denture wax-ups. Courtesy of Stratasys.

While the prices for the new systems aren’t yet available, Stratasys is marketing both CrownWorx and FrameWorx as entry-level systems for smaller labs looking to enter digital fabrication.

Taken with the recent release of the Objet Eden260V Dental Advantage and last year’s Objet OrthoDesk, Stratasys is focusing a lot of attention on dental 3D printing.

Below you’ll find a short video featuring Avi Cohen talking about dental AM.

Source: Stratasys