3D Printing in Dentistry

Today, I wanted to  bring up an exciting investment that I made just a couple of days ago. It’s a 3-D printer for the office. 3-D printing has been in dentistry for several years now. Historically for me in my practice, we've been using a lab to print models for us, or when we need other things printed, we just go through a third party and do it that way. But I've been on a relentless mission these past couple months to absolutely improve every aspect of our Smile Solutions experience, for people that are getting cosmetic smile transformations done with us. And a 3-D printer is kind of an extension of the in-house design of your smile. Once we take photographs, collect all the data and get 3-D scans of patients' teeth. We then do a 3-D design and mockup and print that here.  

Before, I would actually have a lab print and send them to us. But I now have the ability to do the design. So, let me theoretically throw this out there. If somebody came in for the data collection appointment, the same day within a few hours  I can have their 3-D blueprint completely done, printed out, and ready to go. We are then ready to start treatment. So, that's, pretty exciting.

This will greatly improve the workflow. It's gonna take out another opportunity for communication error, delays with shipping, and time of processing with laboratories and things like that. I love laboratories, I truly do. But if there's things that we can bring in-house to make the experience better, we're gonna do that.

So there you have it! We are excited to share this news!. There may be some interesting videos in the future coming up to show you how we use the 3-D printer in our office. 3-D printing in dentistry is one of these things that  has been around for a few years now. But it's gonna become bigger and bigger as time moves on. We're gonna start to print a lot of things that get done in dentistry that typically were fabricated a different way. We will print things like occlusal guards, surgical guides to precisely guide implants, among other things.

Have a beautiful day and please, again, comment, make suggestions for future posts. I'd love to cover any topics you are interested in. Take care.

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