Invisalign treatment has been growing in popularity since its launch in 1999, and its reach has spread around the world. Its use of digital scanning, computer modelling and 3D printing enables it to produce customised teeth aligners that steadily move the teeth into place over the period prescribed to each patient.

The largest orthodontic laboratory in the United Kingdom is Ashford Orthodontics, which was founded in 2001 by Sean Thompson. Working with Formlabs Form 2 and aligners models, the new scans sent by the clients are 3D Printed overnight which are then delivered to the clinicians arriving within the next 48 hours. They have gone fully digital, abolishing the traditional route which helps the client in cost and time savings.

Prodways, a firm developed in partnership with 3Shape, Full Contour, Imes-Icore and Dreve, announced its own Ecosystem at LMT Lab Day 2020 held in Chicago. The Ecosystem aims at manufacturing upto 1200 Dental Aligners per day. The company also owns MOVINGLight DLP, ideal for batch production of products like dental molds for aligners and also acquired SolidScape recently. It will, however, face a competition against companies like HP, which claim to produce 50,000 Aligners per day via Smile Direct Club.

SmileDirectClub, a company founded in 2014 by Alex Fenkell and Jordan Katzman, has provided over 1 Million users with Custom Clear Aligners with pricing as low as 3$/Day. The Company has now partnered with HP to produce 20 million 3D printed molds over the next 12 months, targeted at more than 50,000 molds a day. The company will be using 49 of HP’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printing technology to manufacture the molds 24/7 with 6,300 workforces at 391 locations, therefore giving a tough competition to Invisalign.

Voodoo Manufacturing produces and distributes 3D Printed Clear Orthodontic Aligners for direct-to-consumer brands. Now, they have launched Voodoo Clear Aligners, a new dental manufacturing and distribution service, for its first partnering direct-to-consumer brand Smilelove, and expanded its high-volume 3D Printing factory. The Company states that with the addition of Formlabs 3D Printers, they will be able manufacture and ship more than 20,000 unique orthodontic clear aligners each month in the near future. Currently it can manufacture 20,000 aligner moulds a month with its current set-up, which would see around 700 patients receive treatment, but is planning to scale by four times before the end of year, producing 80,000 moulds a month for 2,800 patients.