Myy Dental Lab — 20 Years of Excellence in Global Dental Outsourcing

How to Evaluate Dental 3D Printing Solutions

Accuracy and Precision

Guaranteeing high-quality, accurate, final parts is the most important concern for any dental lab.

Unfortunately, not all 3D printers marketed for dentistry can all deliver the quality, precision, and

accuracy needed for dental applications.     In addition, comparing different 3D printing solutions

goes beyond looking at technical spec sheets.

Some manufacturers may try to confuse prospective customers with misleading statements and

technical specifications.     Most commonly, they masquerade layer height, laser spot size, or pixel

size as “accuracy”, even though these specifications do not have a direct impact on accuracy

of final parts.     While most companies refer to a single number for accuracy (i.e. 50 microns or

75 microns), these are typically marketing gimmicks, and most commonly represent the limit of

resolution of the printer.

The basic units of the SLA and DLP processes are different shapes, making it difficult to compare the

different machines by numerical specifications alone.

Fundamentally, accuracy and precision depend on many different factors: the quality of the 3D

printer, the 3D printing process, materials, software settings, post-processing, and how well-

calibrated all of these systems are, so a 3D printer can only be judged on its final printed parts.

Always evaluate accuracy studies with real scan data of printed parts.     Even better, ask for a free

sample part or a custom sample of your own design to check the fit or measure yourself against

the original design.

Ease of Use and Reliability

How easy a 3D printer is to use is another important consideration.    After all, you and your team

are going to have to learn how to use the equipment and maintain it on a daily basis.    Try to get

a sense of the learning curve that will come with a new 3D printer by watching videos online,

visiting a trade show, contacting sales teams, or asking colleagues about their experience.

Fortunately, most modern SLA and DLP printers are designed intuitively, so that also practices

that are used to outsourcing production to labs can get familiar with the process easily.

Consider the types of everyday interactions and maintenance the printer will need once it is

up and running.    For example, automatic resin dispensing on Formlabs SLA and LFS 3D printers

means that you never need to worry about running out of material.

Some printers come with proprietary software to prepare 3D models for printing, such as

PreForm for Formlabs 3D printers, while other manufacturers offer off-the-shelf solutions.

Features differ by software tool, for example, PreForm offers a one-click print setup, powerful

manual controls to optimize support density and size, adaptive layer thickness, or functions to

save material and time.