Stratasys Introduces New Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer

If you have ever had any major dental work done, you know how important quality and fit are to the experience. After all, a poorly fitted bridge, for example, can cause severe headaches, nausea, and pain, which is why dentists, orthodontists, and labs who make and test dental products take such care when it comes to  patients’ teeth. Since 3D printing is customized, it is quite compatible with the needs of the denstistry field, and improvements continue to be made in printing dental work. It appears that 3D printing and additive manufacturing giant, Stratasys, is getting deeper into the dental game, as well.

This week, at the  world’s largest trade show for the dental industry, the International Dental Show, in Cologne, Germany, Stratasys will be unveiling its Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer. Hailed as a a versatile new 3D printer, with advanced triple-jetting technology that will help labs produce authentic dental models for testing, Stratasys highlights this printer’s ability to use many different kinds of materials to print a variety of models on a single tray, in one print job. This will save printing time and increase productivity — allowing for all kinds of innovation in the printing and testing of authentic dental models.

The Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer is compatible with all Polyjet dental materials, plus material palettes used to produce realistic colors and textures for gums and teeth. This will facilitate implant testing with stone models that reproduce the gingiva feel for accurate functional evaluation, and it also produces rigid models requiring materials that mimic real gums. High-definition anatomical surgical guides can be printed directly from CBCT scan data, made with contrasting materials that help prevent dental nerve injury.

Stratasys’ Director of Global Dental, Avery Cohen, summarizes this new printer’s contributions to dentistry:

“With the introduction of the Objet260 Dental Selection, Stratasys is closing the loop in digital dentistry by providing a 3D printer that can take the color digital file resulting from the intra-oral scanner and transform it into a color, multi-texture dental model. This directly contributes to better accuracy for the dental practitioners and better understanding for the patients…For any dental or orthodontic lab looking for a competitive edge today and tomorrow, the Objet260 Dental Selection should be at the top of their list.”

Companies are already reporting excellent results using the printer for dental models.  Stefan Remplbauer, the General Manager of Austria-based 3DMedicalPrint, states that the printer now allows them to do work they could not have previously imagined:

“We are using the Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer to produce realistic 3D printed gingiva masks and models we couldn’t do before. We have not had 3D printed dental models that so closely resemble the actual teeth and gums. The initial reactions from our customers, which include dental technicians, dentists and surgeons, have been extremely positive. This is definitely going to help set 3DMedicalPrint apart from our competitors.”

More realistic models that closely resemble actual teeth and gums can only be positive for dentistry, and Stratasys’ new dental printer raises the bar in this category.  It has a build size of 255x252x200 mm; it can build layers down to 16 microns; it is compatible with Windows 7 and 8; and there are many other specifications you can read about here.

As for material usage, this new machine is compatible with the entire range of Stratasys PolyJet dental materials such as VeroGlaze, VeroDent, VeroDentPlus and Clear Bio-compatible. It also can function with additional materials selected for specific dental applications.

Let’s hear your thoughts on this latest machine and what it could mean for the field of dentistry. Discuss in the Objet260 Dental Selection forum thread on 3DPB.com.