DEARBORN — EnvisionTEC, the Dearborn-based manufacturer of 3D printers and materials, announced a new partnership with Scottsdale, Ariz.-based AvaDent Digital Dental Solution, a provider of digital denture software.
Working together, the two companies now offer a complete digital workflow for digital dentures, from impressions and digital design to try-in and final restoration.
A provider of high-accuracy dental 3D printers since 2008, EnvisionTEC launched the first FDA-approved full denture solution for 3D printing in 2017. AvaDent, meanwhile, offers easy-to-use digital denture software and design services to dental professionals, so prosthetics can be quickly manufactured, with more than 100,000 dentures created.
“While 3D printing a full denture on our 3D printers is easy, digitally designing a denture can be complicated,” said EnvisionTEC CEO Al Siblani. “That’s why we’re so excited to work with AvaDent, which offers easy-to-use software and delivers a tested workflow to labs and dentists.”
Added Jan Slor, vice president and general manager of Global Dental Science LLC, which owns AvaDent: “We see an immediate opportunity for labs and clinicians to begin 3D printing try-in dentures and final restorations, alongside the many other dental applications offered by 3D printers.”
EnvisionTEC’s FDA-approved E-Denture pink base material and E-Dent 100 and 400 materials that simulate teeth in a variety of shades means laboratories and dentists can now 3D print lifelike dentures with a custom, digital fit directly in their office. When used on a versatile EnvisionTEC Vida desktop 3D printer, dentists can also directly print crowns, bridges, bite splints, gingiva masks and castables.
AvaDent offers a suite of digital denture services including base plates, bonded dentures, monolithic dentures, hybrid dentures, overdentures, pucks and print files. Customers can scan impressions and send the scan files to the company, which designs a digital denture with proprietary Computer Aided Engineering technology and sends the design file to the customer. Dentists and labs can do the manufacturing of the prosthesis on their own mills or 3D printers — or outsource that work to AvaDent.
The new collaboration will be on display this week at LMT Lab Day Chicago 2018, where the companies will be exhibiting and working together to educate labs, dentists and patients on the benefits of digital dentures, which are regarded as the most difficult dental prosthetic to manufacture because of complex fit, bite and aesthetic requirements.
Digital dentures also offer unique benefits. For example, if a digital denture is lost it can easily be recreated within a couple of days using the digital file that was created and stored. AvaDent estimates that more than 40 percent of new dentures will be made digitally by 2024, with an increasing number being produced directly on 3D printers rather than mills. It is estimated that more than two-third of dental labs already use a 3D printer in their manufacturing processes.
In celebration of their new relationship, EnvisionTEC and AvaDent will be offering a Digital Denture special at LMT Lab Day Chicago that includes significant discounts on an EnvisionTEC Vida and AvaDent software packages.
Founded in 2002, EnvisionTEC now sells more than 40 printers based on six distinct technologies that build objects from digital design files. The company’s premium 3D printers serve a variety of medical, professional and industrial markets. EnvisionTEC’s intellectual property includes more than 140 pending and granted patents. Learn more at EnvisionTEC.com.
More about AvaDent at www.avadent.com.