Ivoclar Vivadent and Wieland offer in-house milling for any-sized lab

Ivoclar Vivadent has commenced the rollout of the Wieland range of CAD/CAM milling solutions for dental laboratories across Australia and New Zealand. Ivoclar Vivadent acquired Wieland late last year and will formally takeover local distribution of its complete range of products at the end of June.

"Wieland's extensive range of products is a perfect complement to Ivoclar Vivadent's existing range of solutions for dental laboratories," said Stewart Forman, Market Development Manager at Ivoclar Vivadent Australia. "In particular, we are excited to be able to offer a complete production solution to laboratories at a time when so many are reinvestigating the option of in-house production.

"The new Wieland Zenotec Select 5-axis mill, in particular, gives a local laboratory the ability to manufacture practically every type of restoration with every available material except titanium, for an extremely competitive price.

"Using Zenotec Select, a laboratory can, for example, mill fully contoured crowns and bridges in Wieland's unique Zenostar - Two in One concept. Rather than just white, Zenostar - Two in One is a coloured translucent zirconia, the shades can be created by using the shades pure, light medium, intense, sun and sun chroma (Figure 5). In total 6 disc shades give the option to reproduce the 16 classical VITAshades and the 26 VITA 3D-Master shades.

In the second half of 2013, they will also be able to mill Ivoclar Vivadent's market-leading IPS e.max lithium disilicate and IPS Empress leucite-glass ceramic. This is in addition to a range of other materials that we can supply or laboratories can source from elsewhere."Right now, every laboratory is asking me how can we compete with the work flooding Australia from offshore laboratories and finally, we have an answer that can both compete with the price and absolutely trump the competition on service and turnaround time."

Mr Forman said that Ivoclar Vivadent is offering both the 5-axis Wieland Zenotec Select and the 4-axis Wieland Zenotec Mini either standalone or packaged with a 3Shape scanner model of their choice, Programat S1 sintering furnace and an extraction system as a complete solution.

"Apart from offering dental laboratories the hardware, software and materials they require to set-up and operate a CAD/CAM production facility in their own premises, we're also backing it with the full support of the Ivoclar Vivadent brand. We understand the requirements for servicing and supporting laboratories using CAD/CAM and we are investing in training, manpower and resources to fully support our customers as only they can expect from Ivoclar Vivadent."

As part of this, Ivoclar Vivadent's technical manager has been trained in Germany on servicing and supporting the equipment so any repairs can be completed locally. In addition, Mr Martin Suchert, one of Wieland's Technical Advisors, recently visited Australia to train Ivoclar Vivadent staff on all aspects of Wieland's CAD/CAM systems.

"The Wieland Zenotec Select is our latest 5-axis mill that can be optioned for dry or wet operation and can include an 8-disc material changer and a 16-position tool changer," Mr Suchert said. "This allows a dental laboratory to mill the majority of materials and restorative designs that are used daily in-house, like glass ceramics, zirconia, non-precious, composite, Hybrid material, PMMA, wax and polyurethane.

"When fully optioned, the Zenotec Select will essentially operate automatically, changing materials dependant on the job to be milled and changing tools based on the material or tool wear. The main concern for the laboratory is to keep plenty of work in the queue to be milled.

Mr Suchert said that Wieland had extensively researched its customer base when designing the new Zenotec Select, released earlier this year and cooperated with leading experts in hardware and software design in its development and manufacture.

"Wieland has traditionally been a materials company, so when we embark on developing a new CAD/CAM system, we work with specialists in both machine manufacture and software development," he said. "The Zenotec Select mill itself is manufactured by well-known German engineering company VHF and includes proprietary Wieland technology, particularly in the spindle design.

"We also work exclusively with a software development company that produces our proprietary CAM software that controls the mill. That software is crucial to the manufacturing process and means we can provide a complete, unique solution that allows laboratories to take full advantage of both the capabilities of the mill and the materials that Wieland is renowned for."

Mr Suchert said that Wieland has taken a very open approach to its CAD/CAM solutions, offering laboratories full choice of the materials they use and the scanning solutions they employ, whether that be the traditional benchtop scanner or the growing array of direct intraoral scanning systems.

"The combined range of products from Wieland and Ivoclar Vivadent mean we can now offer a complete solution in hardware, software, materials and support," Mr Forman said.

"Equally, laboratories are free to source their own materials to use in the mill and can also connect to their existing scanning solution from 3Shape, Dental Wings or other compatible systems.

"Our Programat S1 sintering furnace is also an ideal match for the system and can increase productivity substantially because in the CAD/CAM process, it is sintering time rather than design and milling time that creates the bottleneck. The Programat S1 will sinter a full contour Zenostar zirconia crown in 75 minutes. But even if you have an older furnace, you can still manage two sintering cycles a day if you start one first thing in the morning and the other at the end of the day."

In the dry version, the Zenotech Select will mill Zirconia, non-precious, PMMA, wax or polyurethane. The wet version adds glass ceramics, composite and hybrid materials. The system will take both "industry standard" 98mm discs for "gang" milling multiple restorations or multi-unit restorations as well as individual blocks (IPS e.max, for example, is only available in the latter).

The Wieland CAM software tracks how much of each disc has been used. A single unit can be milled from a disc, the partially used disc can then be stored and reloaded at a later time when demand dictates (automatically if the disc loader is installed). The material cost in the disc is far lower per unit than an individual block, adding to the cost-effectiveness of the system, while also increasing options and efficiencies when large volumes of restorations need to be milled at the same time.

"The milling blanks we supply are labelled with an RFID chip that includes information on the size of the block and its thickness, the type of material it is made of, shrinkage rate, etc," Mr Forman said. "This allows the mill to operate with a high level of automation, loading and reloading blocks and changing tools as each job loaded into the system dictates [assuming that the disc changing and tool changing options are installed].

"If you use third party materials, you can load these in manually or we can organise labels for you to attach for automated recognition. It is a very open system that gives laboratories complete freedom to choose materials and scanning options."

Mr Forman said that there has already been a great deal of interest in the new Zenotec Select as a versatile, cost-effective production solution.

"The Zenotec Select could not have come along at a better time for laboratories in Australia and New Zealand," he said. "CAD/CAM production is now a cost-effective option for mid-sized laboratories and the results are outstanding. The materials technology in unison with a technician's eye for detail and aesthetics has the potential to herald a revolution in the laboratory industry that will claw back work that is being produced offshore by offering dentists better quality and better service at a comparable price."

NB: VITA, the VITA Classical Shade Guide and VITA 3D-Master Shade Guide are products and trademarks of VITA Zahnfabrik H. Rauter GmbH & Co. KG.