FDA Clears 3D Systems’ New Multi-Material Solution for 3D Printed Dentures

3D Systems (NYSE: DDD), the additive manufacturing (AM) industry pioneer based in South Carolina, has achieved Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its one-piece, multi-material denture printing solution. 3D Systems first announced the solution, which enables production of fully 3D printed dentures, in February 2024. 

3D Systems’ first-to-market solution includes two new materials, NextDent Jet Denture Teeth and NextDent Jet Denture Base, which can be processed via the company’s MultiJet Printing (MJP) technology to create fully-functional dentures in a single object. Glidewell Dental Lab, one of the world’s largest dental device providers, is already adopting the new solution via its partnership with 3D Systems.

In a press release the CEO of Glidewell, Stephenie Goddard, said, “We’ve worked with 3D Systems for many years, and using their digital dentistry solutions has helped us achieve tremendous success for our patients. As the first dental lab to have access to 3D Systems’ new multi-material, monolithic jetted denture workflow, we are looking forward to implementing a significantly better denture solution for our customers and their patients.”

Neil McCaffrey, VP & GM of dental at 3D Systems, said, “Unlike other systems, our printer can produce a denture with true multi-material properties — not just color. With the growing use of digital imaging and personalized treatment planning in dental clinics worldwide, digitizing denture fabrication sets a new standard for creating robust, precise dental prosthetics that patients can truly see and feel. It’s a win-win-win for laboratories, dentists, and patients.”

Fully 3D printable dentures are a key product line for 3D Systems going forward, according to an announcement the company made in June. Due to investor questions regarding the firm’s dependence on Align for revenues in the invisible aligner market, 3D Systems essentially assured stockholders that it was expanding into other verticals in the dental space. The next immediate subsegment beyond indirect and direct aligner manufacturing is 3D printed dentures, where competitor Stratasys is also looking to carve out market share with full-color, single-print dentures.

The fact that there is still so much room for innovation in the dental market — the most industrially mature market segment in the AM space — is highly instructive for AM, as a whole.

First off, it highlights just how much longevity there is for strategies based on entering legacy markets with the objective of gradually adding more and more production autonomy, flexibility, and ingenuity to target customers’ wheelhouses. The latest progress in dental reinforces that legacy manufacturing and AM can coexist, over an extended period of time, to the steadily increasing benefit of both.

Further, for more near-term concerns, the lessons from dental also illustrate how AM companies can fruitfully “cut to the chase,” by emulating what dental is doing now without as much preliminary lead-up, to the extent that that’s possible. In this case, 3D Systems is demonstrating how developing products with specific, in-demand solutions in mind is perhaps the most surefire way to unlock opportunities for revenue growth.

In dental, this works because the AM industry has progressively taken on more and more of the industry’s supply chains over the course of decades. However, the same strategy could potentially also work in supply chains that are just getting off the ground — for instance, the supply chains for renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs), and next-generation semiconductors in the US.

Images courtesy of 3D Systems