Nobilium has announced that it now represents EOS, a world leader in laser-sintering solutions, to bring additive manufacturing technology, also known as industrial 3D printing, to dental laboratories in North America.
Laser sintering "grows" near-net shapes, doing away with costly and time-consuming tasks such as waxing, investing, divesting, cutting, and grinding. This makes it economical for Direct Metal Laser-Sintering (DMLS™) to create mass-customized crowns, bridges and removeable partial dentures.
DMLS is a manufacturing technology that builds-up parts additively layer by layer by fusing metal powder into a solid part by melting it locally using a focused laser beam.
With the traditional casting production process, a dental technician can currently produce only approximately 20 dental units per day. With EOS laser-sintering solutions, however, approximately 450 units for crowns and bridges can be produced within 24 hours, at the same time ensuring constant product quality. This corresponds to approximately 3 minutes average build time per unit.
Thin cross sections of alloy powder are sequentially melted by a laser driven by this geometry, automatically building complete 3D restorations with structural fixtures attached.
Needless to say, laser sintering is revolutionary in the dental laboratory environment. The financial advantages are huge.
On the one hand, the DMLS system produces up to 450 dental units directly from CAD data (in one single process, without casting) within one day.
Removable partial dentures can also be made via DMLS and have a higher strength than a conventional lost-wax castings and the risk of a clasp breakage is lower. The high level of detail supports the reproduction of complex structures and the finished products comply with the relevant standards EN 1641 as well as EN ISO 22674.
EOS technology is very accurate and therefore makes laboratory work easier. The DMLS removable partial denture has an accuracy of +/- 20 μm and is of a consistently high quality. Around 48 units can be produced within 24 hours. This corresponds to an average construction time of around 30 minutes per unit.
