A report from Smartech Markets Publishing indicated that Dental printing could see exponential growth.

EnvisionTEC introduced their newest 3D printer for orthodontic practices and laboratories in Booth #3121 at the American Association of Orthodontics 2015 Annual Session in San Francisco, California.  The Perfactory® Vida is a low cost, open architecture, easy to maintain and user friendly 3D printer for the digital dental laboratory.

ClearCorrect LLC manufactures clear dental aligners, and they say using 3D printers to build each and every one of their fittings has helped them realize a 30% increase in the company’s capacity to produce those custom-made orthodontic aligners.

3D Medical Limited, who listed on the American Stock Exchange and raised $4 million in February of this year, has received an order for 25 similar implants. The implants will be created over a period spanning the next 12 months.

Surgeons have successfully implanted a titanium 3D-printed prosthetic jaw in a Melbourne man in an Australian-first operation.  The patient, 32-year-old psychologist Richard Stratton, was missing part of his jawbone including the left condyle, the joint to the skull.

Taking CT and X-ray data, Longgang Gong, the ENT specialist at Xi’an Red Cross Hospital, created a 3D printed model of the patient's disheveled mandible in order to get a more realistic view of the defects that needed correcting.

Oxford Performance Materials announced that they have received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for their 3D printed SpineFab VBR System Implants, marking the first ever 3D printed polymer, load-bearing device for implantation that has received FDA clearance.

Chinese researchers have created a new generation SLA printer which can work with viscous liquids such as ceramics and porcelains that could be used to print teeth in minutes.

A 3-year-old Chinese girl is now able to speak and eat thanks to surgery done after creating a 3D printed medical model of her fused jaw.

Reinout Holtrup, a student of industrial design at the University of Twente in the Netherlands created a prototype for a DLP 3D printer called the XZEED Multi-Material DLP Printer which can print with up to five materials/colors at once.

The INDMATEC HPP 155 is a FDM 3D printer capable of printing high temperature polymeric materials (1.75 mm) – and specifically conditioned for printing PEEK.

The FDA cleared a 510(k) for the use of DENTCA’s new 3D printable material as a denture base, the first such approval in the denture production space. 

Using a 3D scanner to map a patient’s mouth, CSIRO researchers and Australian dental company, Oventus, can now print a mouthpiece which prevents dangerous pauses in breath during sleep. 

Using a Stratasys Dimension 1200es 3D printer from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Amos Dudley, a digital design student, 3D Printed his own set of orthodontic aligners. Since it was a DIY aligner costing less than 60$ compared to 1K$, it went viral within a week.

Dutch researchers at the University of Groningen claim they can 3D print teeth made of anti-microbial plastic. This anti-microbacterial plastic can kill 99% of bacteria which cause tooth decay. Quaternary ammonium salts inside existing dental resin polymers can prevent tooth decay, so you never have to worry about losing teeth again.

Dubai had it's future office 3d printed recently, and now it is looking for medical field to be taken care by 3D printing technology. The Dubai Health Authority announced to create prosthetic limbs for patients for less than Dh400(108.9$) and develop printable ceramic teeth in less than 20 minutes around 2025. The Authority believes 3D printing will accelerate patients’ healing process by up to 80 per cent.

Josh Stephenson, a graphic designer underwent surgery to remove his left eye, upper left jaw and the roof of his mouth after failure of radiation treatment for malignant melanoma. Using a 3D-scanned and printed copy of Stephenson's skull and scapular bone, Andrew Dawood, a dentist with Dawood and Tanner, recreated his entire jaw.

Formalabs recently launched its Dental SG Resin, a certified biocompatible Class 1 material, designed specifically for creating high-precision surgical guides directly from 3D models. Marketed as first commercially available biocompatible resin for desktop printing, it will provide high-precision drill guides from digital scan data for implant surgeries.

Shirley Anderson lost his lower jaw after surgery and radiotherapy for his tongue cancer diagnosed in 1998. However, meeting with Dr. Travis Bellicchi, a maxillofacial prosthetics specialist, he received a 3D Printed Jaw prosthetic printed from Formalabs 3D Printer.

Inside 3D Printing Conference & Expo San Diego is going to take place on December 14 and 15 at the San Diego Convention Center, of which the four tracks for the show have been announced recently : The Business Track, The Manufacturing Track, The Medical Track and The Metal Track. The Medical Track at the show will offer insight into the design and manufacturing of customized implants, dental devices, tissues, etc. using a variety of additive technologies. Registration is currently open until September 16.

Periodontist Professor Saso Ivanovski, from Griffith University’s Menzies Institute has announced that he has developed a way to engineer missing bone and tissue in the gums and jaw by using a patient’s own cells after 5 years of research. This will involve taking CT scan of patient's damaged region which will be sent to bioprinter to 3D Print new part and the whole procedure will decrease the significant pain, nerve damage and postoperative swelling. National Health and Medical Research Council has granted it $650,000 for the potential it holds in dental industry.

A 10-year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis report by Whatech has revealed that revenues from additive manufacturing (AM) in the dental sector have grown almost 12 percent since 2015 and the market is expected to see boom with development of 3D Printing Technology for researches like Custom Braces, Gums and Jaws Implants, etc. The report explains how development of new 3D printers, materials, and applications is the strongest targets for the development and how it is expected to grow in upcoming years.

What does aesthetic dentistry have to offer the discerning dental patient both now and potentially in the not-too-distant future? The possibility of fabricating 3D teeth with antimicrobial properties is already being explored.

Dubai Health Authority is working on a 3D printing strategy for medical services. Dubai Health Authority stresses the importance of utilizing smart technology especially 3D printing in diagnosing, preventing and treating patients and sees dental care as a sector with huge potential.

Royal Canin’s veterinary marketing manager Marianne Lomberg said: "These high-quality and accurate models will be a valuable addition to the education resources available to veterinary schools and professionals – ultimately helping contribute to a higher standard of dental care available to cats and dogs.”

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.

A group of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are working on using an SLA 3D printing method to manufacture temporary teeth restorations. Temperature Controlled Mask image projection-based stereolithography (TCMIP-SL) processes use a set of horizontal planes to slice a 3D object, and each slice is converted into a 2D mask image. Then, a 2D patterned light beam, which is controlled by a digital micromirror device (DMD), is projected on the surface of a photocurable material, which is then cured layer by layer to build the 3D object.

A group of researchers from the Sri Rajiv Gandhi College of Dental Sciences & Hospital in Bangalore, India evaluated the marginal accuracy of Cobalt-Chromium copings (thin covering of the tooth’s crown portion) fabricated using DMLS, computer-aided milling, traditional casting, and ringless casting and comparatively analyze the marginal discrepancy. They used typodont resin model made of silicone impression material and 40 copings, for which they used 3D laser scanner from 3Shape to obtain an indirect impression of the tooth model, and then used the data to design the coping in 3Shape’s CAD software program, before they were 3D printed on an EOSINT M 270 3D printer from EOS.

A group of researchers from Tokyo Dental College set up a “One-stop 3D printing lab” at the college for the purposes of quickly and inexpensively designing and 3D printing models for oral and maxillofacial surgery. The researchers created their One-Stop 3D printing Lab by generalizing the software and hardware around its inexpensive Value3D MagiX MF-2000 desktop 3D printer from MUTOH Industries Ltd. The researchers determined, by 3D printing dental models daily, that the amount of preparation cost and modeling material can be lowered by increasing the laminating pitch.

Additive Manufacturing Strategies event will be going live on 29^th-31^st January, 2018 in Boston, which will revolve around the trends and future of 3D Printing in Medicine and Dentistry. With workshops, startup competitions and exhibitions, SmarTech analysts giving overviews of developments; the event will aim consultants, business development people, leaders in manufacturing and operations people who have a significant role in future of 3D Printing in medical field.

Dr. Les Kalman at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry has developed a dental implant abutment system called the Tempcap in collaboration with ADEISS, a 3D Printing Company dedicated to medical and dental 3D printing solutions. Using Renishaw 3D printers,  ADEISS worked on designing and 3D printing a version of the dental device in dental-grade titanium for testing, which was proved to increase the provisional crown quality and reduce the time required to fabricate the provisional crown for mandibular implant sites.

Zortrax recently launched two brand new Resins for its latest Inkspire 3D Printing Platform for dental and prosthetic applications. Raydent Crown & Bridge is class IIa biocompatible, lasts 30 days, is safe for human contact and can boasts high abrasion resistance guaranteeing permanent smooth surfaces and anatomical shape for the duration of its usage. Another product involved Raydent Surgical Guide, Class I biocompatibility, which is safe for transient contact with human tissue, translucent to enhance visibility, features high dimensional accuracy to enable correct placement of implants or guidance for tools, and low viscosity and water resistance to make the guides easy to wash.

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.

A group of Researchers in Italy approached 3D Printing to create Intraoral Occlusal Splints, which are used by dentists to treat temporomandibular disorders as they force muscles to relax and provide relief from pain. A 44-year-old man with unknown medical cause for pain in his jaws, was selected and fit with Intraoral Occlusal Splint to stop the pain and reposition the mandible. The team scanned the teeth of the patient and saved it as .stl file, followed by using 3D ProJet MJP 3600 Dental by 3D Systems to 3D print the Intraoral Splint, with VisiJet® M3 Stoneplast acrylic resin, made for dental practices. The patient got relief of the pain within three weeks and has been advised to keep using the splint for another six months.

Researchers from Taiwan worked on improved methods of accommodating bone defects after failed implants must be removed using 3D Printing. Bio-Active Dental implant, which were manufactured with laser-sintered additive 3D printing technique, were used in animal experiments where one side of distal femurs was randomly selected for the commercially pure titanium NobelActive implant (control group) and the other side with Bio-Active Ti₆Al₄V porous dental implant (ITRI group). After Bio-printing with EOSINT M 280 system, the researchers concluded that by enlarging pore width at the nanoscale, they can to increase bioactivity features as well as accelerate osseogenesis during Dental Surgeries.

German Researchers used SLA 3D Printer to create much realistic model for Case Scenarios based on the CBCT of the maxilla of a real patient that imitated several traumatic dental injuries, which was then used in a hands-on training course on Dental traumatology for undergraduate students in their final year in the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Periodontology in Munich, Germany. While half of the students were provided with access to dentaltraumaguide.org, the others didn’t. The students were then evaluated, where 57% reported it to be ‘very realistic’ and 43% choosing ‘rather realistic’, therefore concluding that 3D Printed Dental Models assisted students in correctly managing traumatic dental injuries.

Dr. Alfred Griffin, founder and CEO of the LightForce Orthodontics, a Start-up created on the idea of creating Patient-Specific Brackets using 3D Printing, aims at evolving with the Orthodontics industry and provide better innovative ideas in the field. Alfred created a patented system for 3D printed Orthodontic Treatment Brackets, using material nearly identical to injection modelled ceramic brackets, but formulated specifically for 3D printing. It’s a simple three-step digital workflow: scan, create the 3D model, and print. The online interface comes with cloud-based treatment planning software that allows users to make adjustments directly on the model, before the custom 3D printed appliance is shipped in just 7-10 business days after approval.

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.

This year’s IDS Summit 2019 held at Cologne, Germany, saw collaboration between California’s Nexa3D, a manufacturer of 3D printers offering stereolithography (SLA) for production-grade users, and BEGO, a provider of materials for dentist’s offices. Together, they are marketing the Varseo XL, to be sold by BEGO, headquartered in Germany. The new dental 3D printer is customized with Nexa3D’s proprietary Lubricant Sublayer Photo-curing (LSPc) technology, which functions via a high-speed light matrix, and will allow dental offices to print six times faster at ten times the volume, with a print area that is five times greater than any other dental 3D printer on the market. The Varseo XL will be showcased at IDS 2019 at booth M20/N29 – Hall 10.2, Koelnmesse, Fair Grounds, Cologne-Deutz until the fair closes on March 19, 2019.

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.

3D Systems has received FDA 510(k) Clearance for their Biocompatible Dental Material, NextDent Denture 3D+, developed for use on the NextDent 5100 3D printing platform. According to 3D Systems, combination with the NextDent C&B MFH material, which has been designed to print the teeth of a denture, users can save up to 90% in cost and 75% in time for producing the base of denture. The new material also possesses excellent mechanical properties in accordance with ISO Denture Base Standards and the comprehensive colour palette allows dental labs are able to match the printed product to the patient’s gums.