Metal 3D Printing with Cobalt Chrome Added to Desktop Health’s Dental Portfolio

Desktop Health, the recently launched healthcare business within Desktop Metal, Inc. (NYSE: DM), creates, manufactures, and markets a suite of 3D printing and biofabrication solutions, but dental applications have been at the forefront since the get-go. Today, the business announced an addition to its dental portfolio with a high-speed turnkey metal binder jet 3D printer for dental labs, along with the launch of chrome cobalt. Pairing this new material with the Shop System should ensure that dental labs can set up fully digital workflows in order to create and deliver faster, less expensive chrome cobalt crowns, partial dentures, bridges, and more.

“We are excited to introduce the Shop System and chrome cobalt for binder jetting to the dental community, expanding our suite of best-in-class 3D printing solutions from photopolymers to metals. We are uniquely positioned by offering dental labs not only a leading photopolymer platform, but also a turnkey solution to produce metal appliances and surgical guides with superior surface finish in higher production volumes compared to laser-based 3D printing systems,” stated Michael Jafar, the President and CEO of Desktop Health.

According to Desktop Health, the high-throughput Shop System is one of the fastest metal binder jetting solutions in the world, able to print up to 32 partials in less than four hours with excellent resolution and surface finish. The printer fabricates fully supported metal parts in the powder bed, and also has software-generated, hand-removable sintering setters, which majorly helps lower the post-processing costs and labor time; this, in turn, helps decrease costs for custom dental applications to as low as one-third the cost you’d see creating the same number of parts on a laser-based 3D printer.

“3D printing of metal parts for dentistry can finally see an efficient solution with binder jet technology from Desktop Health. The Shop System allows a simple and safe process for producing accurate appliances with an extremely well integrated system and workflow,” said Christopher M. Silvoy, DMD, an expert in dental implants and a diplomate of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (ICOI). “With a large build volume and fast build times, the system provides an opportunity to eliminate outsourcing, increase quality of outcome, and potentially change dentistry.”

3D printed and polished osteotomy guide for dental implants

Dental labs looking to 3D print dental appliances with metal binder jetting can enjoy a well-rounded solution in the Shop System, which includes all the necessary hardware, materials, and software to get from build preparation all the way to 3D printing and sintering. The business says that the Shop System is easy to use thanks to a simplified software interface, and also features superior print quality and high productivity, able to print end-use metal parts with build sizes up to 16L, at ten times the speed and far less money than what Desktop Health refers to as “legacy additive manufacturing technologies.”

Other benefits of the Shop System include default processing parameters and engineered powders that are said to ensure repeatability, and a 5x nozzle redundancy on the advanced single pass printhead with 1600 native DPI. This allows dental technicians to print complex, dense parts with fine feature detail, great surface finish, and, according to Desktop Health, 400% higher resolution than comparable binder jet 3D printers.

Removable partial denture framework with contactless support, 3D printed on Shop System

The turnkey Shop System is now available for pre-order by dental labs, while the chrome cobalt, commercially available pending FDA clearance, has been qualified for the printer. Desktop Health’s materials scientists are working to add more dental materials to its library that can be processed on the Shop System.