What kind of product you want to outsource?
Single units or multi-units product?
In case of multi-units before investing into scan body you should also check some scanning center or milling center with scanning services.
It can be less expensive and also will not limit you to 20-30 ish brand of implant.
Scan body are in fact a solution to a scanning problem.
In order to scan an implant the scanner (whatever brand, 3shape, imetric, smartoptic, dental wings, optimet, lava, etc etc) cannot scan metal analog, to solve this problem we use scan body parts that are made from material that scanner are able to see.
Some milling center have industrial technology, (laser, touch, other) and can scan directly the analog without a scan body, increasing the precision by FAR. For single unit, this kind of technology will be "overkill" except if you do not have a scan body (example on DIO implant a Korean company where i had to do a bar few days ago) with an industrial scanner we can scan whatever implant it is and make it fit.
So it very important to look into your needs before investing :
-What product you want to do (single units or multi units)
-Where you want to outsource (is your preferred milling center work with the scan body library you want to acquired (NT Trading, ELOS, etc) or don't need them at all
-What brand of implant you want to cover (The major 5-7 brand or more?)
-What scanner and software you use (is the library is compatible for all implant system with your software)
-Cost (some kit can be very expensive)
-Your vision of perfect fit (only for multi-unit cases) at the end of the day a scanner have a precision that we measure in microns, the scanbody was made by a machine that have a tolerance again in microns, the scan body should be around 5-7 microns bigger or smaller than the CAD file it was milled from. Plus your scanner might be around 15-20 ish micron precise, so with the scan body it like saying that you scanner is now 25-30 micron (cause it can be +5 micron for 1 scan body and -5 micron for the other making a difference of 10 microns on the fit for a 2 implant case) so you can understand on a bar/bridge on 6-8 implant plus you can have a huge gap between the real fit. On top of that, the milling machine that will mill your parts (bar/bridge) also have a tolerance. Some machine is around 3-5 (multi millions dollars machine) some other will be higher to 8-10 even 15 in some cheaper equipment.
So overall, it not an easy question neither one that everyone understand completely, but at the end of the day it all depend of what you want to do, what quality you want to achieve and at what price.
regards
