In-office 3D printing can help dental professionals control costs, increase case acceptance, and increase flexibility. If you’re considering adding a printer to your practice or are thinking of upgrading your current unit, you should consider the impact that 3D printer speed and throughput will have on your overall workflow.
3D Printer Speed By The Numbers
SprintRay Pro offers incredible speed and the best throughput in its category. With a massive build plate and high-intensity projector that is precisely calibrated for accuracy and speed, it represents the best that dental 3D printing has to offer.
To give a sense of just how fast SprintRay Pro is, we set up a comparison between Pro, MoonRay S, and a typical laser-SLA competitor.
To ensure fairness, we used data freely available from our competition and recreated each print on each machine as closely as possible in order to represent real-world dental printing scenarios.
Case 1: Dental Models
Whether you’re fabricating models for the production of clear aligners or creating wax-ups, diagnostic casts or anything else, speed is paramount. For this test, we printed as many full-arch models as possible, oriented flat against the build platform, to simulate clear aligner production.
SprintRay Pro and the new SprintRay Die and Model resins are specifically designed to work together, creating models with outstanding accuracy at a breakneck pace. So what does the speed differential look like when we level the playing field and fill the platforms of SprintRay Pro, MoonRay S, and a laser-SLA competitor?
Full-arch dental models printed flat at 100-micron layer height.
Because SprintRay 3D printers utilize DLP, they can print full platforms of models without sacrificing speed. Thanks to advances in materials and tank technology, SprintRay Pro is faster still than MoonRay S, completing 8 flat full-arch models in just over 30 minutes.
When you combine the speed of SprintRay Pro with the volume of its build platform, you begin to really see the multiplying gains of DLP technology.
While SprintRay Pro has around 10x throughput than its SLA competitor when producing models, many doctors use their in-office 3D printers to produce biocompatible dental appliances such as surgical guides or nightguards, and such appliances are usually printed in lower volumes than models for clear aligners, so we decided to test two more dental applications to see if the speed difference is still relevant.
Case 2: Nightguards
Nearly every patient can benefit from wearing a nightguard; they can reduce wear and gingival recession, also protecting restorative treatments. Without 3D printing, the fabrication process can be long and the final results can be very costly. Thanks to digital impression scanners and SprintRay Pro, you can manufacture up to a dozen nightguards per hour at only a few dollars per guard in materials cost.
For this test, we once again oriented the models flat against the build plate. However, because nightguards don’t feature a flat base like dental models, we used automatically-generated supports at medium strength and density for all three print jobs generated within the relevant print prep software.
For the first test, we prepared nightguard designs for four patients to gauge 3D printer speed for this application. For the second simulation, we filled the platforms with as many nightguards as could fit in flat orientation in order to test the max throughput.
Because of its large build platform and high-definition DLP projector, SprintRay Pro can produce nearly a dozen nightguards per hour when oriented horizontally with the build platform. Even if you’re printing only one or two guards at a time, you can easily provide same- or next-day guards with a mere 30-minute print time.
Case 3: Full-Arch Surgical Guides
Guided surgery improves the experience for both doctor and patient. Before in-office 3D printing, a mill was required in order to surgical guides in-office, and even then only quadrant guides were possible. 3D printing makes it easy, cost-effective, and quick to fabricate full-arch guides in-house for very little cost without putting undue stress on your mill.
Since implant placement is less common in some offices, we set up this job with 2 guides to simulate a common printing configuration. Similar to the nightguard test, we oriented the models flat on the platform and populated automatically-generated supports in the print prep software.
Once again, SprintRay Pro is the winner for 3D printer speed. When printing two guards, it took less than half the time of the SLA competitor. MoonRay S performed well in this test, too, completing two guides in just over a half hour.
And when a larger capacity is required, SprintRay Pro’s throughput is multiplied, fitting 7 horizontal arches simultaneously and printing them in a half hour, offering a total throughput of over a dozen full-arch surgical guides per hour.
Printers like SprintRay Pro and the MoonRay S offer incredible production capacity due to their advanced DLP technology, vastly increasing flexibility for myriad treatments. This flexibility translates to a better experience for your patients, allowing them to receive treatment same- or next-day.
Thanks to DLP technology, SprintRay 3D printers are both incredibly fast and outstandingly accurate. They have the speed for rapid single-part prints and the capacity for huge production batches. Thanks to 3rd party materials support, they are some of the most flexible printers on the market.
A full ecosystem of 3D printing software, materials, printers, and post-processing equipment is backed by our free lifetime phone support and extensive training resources. While you may start small with 3D printing, your hardware needs to keep up as you increase efficiency.