With modern lifestyle, oral healthcare has gained importance. While good oral hygiene and eating the right food can reduce the risk of tooth decay and gum disease, almost everyone needs to visit a dentist for oral healthcare treatment some time or the other. Modern techniques have ensured that dental treatment is fairly comfortable and 3D printers and 3D printing is playing an increased role in ensuring that. Today, 3D printing is used routinely in the aerospace sector, automobile sector, healthcare, and even in construction and architecture. In this article, we will look at the benefits 3D printing offers for various dental procedures.
3D Printing and its Advantages
A 3D printer works by receiving instructions from the CAD design file (mostly in STL format), squirts out or solidifies powdered, molten or liquid material into a specific flat pattern. After this layer solidifies, the print head repeats the task by forming another layer on top of the first layer. Eventually, these thin layers build up the 3D object. There are various 3D printing technologies like Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and many others; each serves a specific purpose and has its own advantages and disadvantages. Since a 3D printer works by depositing material, it is also called as additive manufacturing (AM). Additive manufacturing offers many advantages over traditional manufacturing. For one, most of the traditional manufacturing processes like drilling, milling, etc. create physical objects by cutting away raw material or using moulds to form new shapes. Since it is additive rather than subtractive, 3D printing saves raw material and consequently saves wastage. One of the most significant advantages of 3D printing is that it can print complex objects as easily as simple objects. In traditional mechanical manufacturing processes, the more complex the object, more the manufacturing cost. 3D printers make things by following instructions from a computer and stacking raw material into layers. No costly tooling is required. 3D printers don’t cut or mould things into shape the way humans or traditional manufacturing machines do. Making objects in layers opens up the ability to physically output a broader range of digital concepts. If a shape’s design has precise internal hollows or interlocked parts, a 3D printer is the first output device that can realize such designs in the physical world. In that regard, 3D printers are more accurate and versatile than any other mode of production. 3D printing technology makes it possible to fabricate a complex design into a physical object, combining raw materials in ways that were once impossible. Another important advantage of 3D printing is the alacrity with which the printing can be customized. Since a 3D printer works on the instructions of a CAD file, there is no need to create any costly dies, jigs or tools that are needed for manufacturing objects on a small scale. With 3D printing, it is entirely possible to produce a few or even a single object. This attribute of 3D printing comes in very handy while manufacturing niche components. This property comes in extremely handy while bio-printing (an additive manufacturing process in which cells and biomaterials are used to print an object layer by layer) as well.
3D printing is now making inroads into end product manufacturing rather than only prototyping. When some current limitations like cost and printer speed are overcome, 3D printing will definitely enter mainstream production in India and other parts of the world. Even small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) stand to benefit by the use of 3D printers.
3D Printing in Dental Procedures
Apart from tooth fillings, common dental procedures include bridges, crowns, and root canal. Let us see how 3D printing is benefitting these and other dental procedures. As we have mentioned above, one of the prime advantages of 3D printing is customization. Nowhere is customization more important than in personal healthcare. Each individual is unique, and dental procedures require unique, tailor made solutions. Traditional ways of dental treatment, especially ones that require fittings and adjustment, are dependent on the skills of laboratory technicians. Moreover, it is a back and forth process as desired accuracy (comfortable fit for the patient) is usually not accomplished in the very first trial. Take the case of bridges. A bridge is a fixed replacement for a missing tooth or teeth.It's made by taking an impression of the surrounding teeth, which will eventually support the bridge. Filing adjacent teeth and making the missing tooth fit perfectly requires at least a few sittings. The same is also true for dentures.With 3D printing, the fitting is simpler. Once the dentist scans the mouth with an intraoral scanner (an intraoral scanner is a handheld device used by the dentist to create digital impression data of the oral cavity directly), it is converted into a 3D CAD image. Speciality printers – like those from Stratasys for example – then directly create the bridge or dentures. While conventional methods may require weeks to complete the final fit, 3D printers can do it in a single day. 3D printing technology can therefore help dental practices and labs reduce costs, work more efficiently and create better quality products in less time than conventional methods. Secondly, handmade dental restorations may lack consistency. However, with proper printer settings, 3D printing can consistently produce dental restorations of uniform accuracy and detail, especially when compared with subtractive manufacturing technology.
With 3D printing, there’s no need to go through the lengthy process of taking physical impressions of a patient's teeth and then creating plaster mock-ups. Digitizing a dental laboratory’s workflow enables dentists to improve accuracy, and reduce the time needed to produce crowns and bridges more efficiently. Not only that, 3D printing can also be used to replace / repair a damaged tooth, produce caps, dental implants, or even manufacture surgical tools like trays, guides, splints, etc.
According to a research (source: https://www.dentalnews.com/2022/08/29/dental-3d-printing-market/), the global dental 3D printing market is expected to grow from USD 1.9 billion in 2020 to USD 8.6 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of over 29.2% during the forecast period. USD 8.6 billion is a staggering 700+ crore Indian rupees. This is the reason why reputed 3D printer manufacturers are coming up with more and more innovative technologies to offer dedicated dental printers.