Fabdent commissions Australia's first fully automatic 3D printing system

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation will be the future of dental technology and this will be no more prevalent than in 3D printing. In a joint collaboration between Fabdent Digital Dental Technology and HeyGears 3D Printing, Australia's first 3D printing system capable of 24-hour non-stop autonomous operation was commissioned in Fabdent's Sydney dental laboratory in April.

"We've been working closely with Heygears for about 18 months and were originally planning to install the previous model of this printer," said Yahah Karim, Fabdent's technical production manager. "We waited patiently and after we were notified the A3D Ultracraft printer would be available in the near future, we decided to invest in this latest technology. We've been using 3D printing for the past 15 years so we're not new to the technology and we have many brands of printers that we are happy with as all of them do their job very well.

"However, we can already see the trend in AI and automation is going to make a big difference to the way we work. Currently about 80% of our work is coming in from intraoral scans, so having the ability to print 24 hours a day unattended is going to make a massive difference. The software from Heygears is nothing short of amazing and we can 'remote in' from any computer anywhere in the world and compile jobs and have them printed, even when we're not physically in the laboratory."

Realistically, the printer needs to be attended to once a day but this a far cry from the constant attendance of conventional printers that need attending to hourly. The printer can print any type of polymer-based dental model, appliance or restoration and has some very high tech features not found on any other dental printer.

"I can see this will be the start of something big for Fabdent and of huge benefit to our customers. We're looking forward to ramping it up and seeing what this printer can really do."

Fabdent is both a full service digital dental laboratory with multiple 3D printers and milling machines and also the home to the Truline brand of Australian-made clear aligners.