Best Mill for PMMA & Zirconia

[aumc24]

Hi all, I am looking to purchase a new mill or 2 specifically for PMMA, Zirconia, and eventually surgical guides out of titanium. Curious your thoughts on what 2 machines would serve me best for these objectives.

 

[tuyere]

We need more context to give a useful recommendation: what are you milling, what's your production volume like, what's your budget, are there any features or functions you specifically want, what environment is this mill intended for, who will be operating it and what's their experience, etc etc.

In any case- milling titanium should be an entirely separate consideration from zirc/PMMA, you will need a great deal more Mill to do that regularly, so I'd cross that bridge when you come to it.

 

[aumc24]

Mostly milling crowns and implants, but bridges and arches are not out of the question. And production will be low to average for a while on these machines.
The budget is more tied to what it can do, than what the cost is. And a big consideration is customer support, I have had bad experiences with roland being a horrible customer support brand, and just leaving us in the dark on fixes and maintenance & repair times.
I think the most important feature is being able to Mill in both materials but mainly PMMA.
and lastly, the lab is just starting, with 1 client, and a focus on surrounding local dentists. I will be operating it with a technician designing and finishing. I have some experience in running mills and using the cam software.

 

[CoolHandLuke]

surgical guides out of titanium

been there

burned the t shirt

 

[tuyere]

FWIW, my personal experience (and the opinion of professional cnc repair techs I know) is that Roland has genuinely-good customer service, as far as these things go- they're the only company I've seen who actively does outreach to people with issues online to work with them on stuff. Most machine manufacturers don't want any contact or engagement with the actual end users, they're an exception. They're not perfect, nor are their machines, but I'd rather deal with Roland 10 times over than deal with, for example, VHF even once, they were actively hostile to our inquiries, ignored our vendor's own communications trying to get issues resolved, and we've basically ruled out another VHF going forward as a result. The worst I can say about Roland is that obscure replacement parts are often on backorder, but that's pretty typical for any machine tool manufacturer who isn't based locally.

The other big consideration here is that the machine manufacturer will not be your primary contact for issues, or even involved at all, a lot of the time- that'll be your vendor, and yeah, their support can be make-or-break. If you have a local vendor you like, look at the machines they'll sell and service, because that's more important than the manufacturer themselves for most support issues.

 

[tuyere]

In any case- it looks like you want a no-nonsense workhorse dry 'starter mill', for which I do, sorry, have to recommend a Roland, a DWX-52D is probably up your alley- it's a proven design that's reliable and precise, widely-supported by vendors and reasonably-priced, especially with the -53s coming out now. They're our zirconia and PMMA workhorses, we run 7 of them for 18 hours a day. It's a lightweight machine without much rigidity, but that's fine for zirc and PMMA stuff that isn't super-ambitious, you just won't be able to do monster roughing passes for dentures or whatever like you can with a PM7 or imus-icore or something much beefier. The -52DCi is the same mill but with a disc changer- you probably don't need one, and it'll shave a lot off the price to go without, but being able to queue up work and then go do something else for 6 hours is a beautiful thing, so consider it.
For bread-and-butter C&B zirc, Rolands are absolutely the most common pick across the labs i've seen, even big labs with the means to purchase much more substantial mills, and it's for good reason. PMMA definitely benefits from a beefier, more rigid mill with bigger tooling, you can cut down on your time per part by buying More Mill, but a Roland just takes a little longer to run those same parts. If you're not confident you need that extra productivity you can save a lot by starting out with a Roland and upgrading/adding to your fleet as you go, imo.

 

[AaronW12321]

In any case- it looks like you want a no-nonsense workhorse dry 'starter mill', for which I do, sorry, have to recommend a Roland, a DWX-52D is probably up your alley

Ditto on the Roland DWX-52D recommendation

 

[Manikandan]

FWIW, my personal experience (and the opinion of professional cnc repair techs I know) is that Roland has genuinely-good customer service, as far as these things go- they're the only company I've seen who actively does outreach to people with issues online to work with them on stuff. Most machine manufacturers don't want any contact or engagement with the actual end users, they're an exception. They're not perfect, nor are their machines, but I'd rather deal with Roland 10 times over than deal with, for example, VHF even once, they were actively hostile to our inquiries, ignored our vendor's own communications trying to get issues resolved, and we've basically ruled out another VHF going forward as a result. The worst I can say about Roland is that obscure replacement parts are often on backorder, but that's pretty typical for any machine tool manufacturer who isn't based locally.

The other big consideration here is that the machine manufacturer will not be your primary contact for issues, or even involved at all, a lot of the time- that'll be your vendor, and yeah, their support can be make-or-break. If you have a local vendor you like, look at the machines they'll sell and service, because that's more important than the manufacturer themselves for most support issues.

I agree. I once called vHF directly for an issue we had, the support was so rude that they told not to call them direct and route calls through the reseller. Funny thing the reseller had no clue on the issue so had to put them on conference call. Such a messed up system.

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

Mostly milling crowns and implants, but bridges and arches are not out of the question. And production will be low to average for a while on these machines.
The budget is more tied to what it can do, than what the cost is. And a big consideration is customer support, I have had bad experiences with roland being a horrible customer support brand, and just leaving us in the dark on fixes and maintenance & repair times.
I think the most important feature is being able to Mill in both materials but mainly PMMA.
and lastly, the lab is just starting, with 1 client, and a focus on surrounding local dentists. I will be operating it with a technician designing and finishing. I have some experience in running mills and using the cam software.

milling metals vs milling soft materials (zirc/pmma) are two different beasts as mentioned above.
roland makes some solid work horses for dry mills, no doubt. ive put 8yr on my 51D and short of a new spindle and c-clamp screws it has needed nothing from me. granted we keep it nice and tidy and try not to abuse the machine, but its done everything ive needed it to do without exception.

wet mills, thats a different story and ive been on the hunt for the correct wet mill for nearly a year. narrowed it down to a few that will suit my needs, but everyone has their own requirements. lots of good machines to choose from. lots of homework to do on your side. no matter what machines you consider, you will always find haters and cheerleaders. best of luck, let us know what way youre leaning!

 

[Brett Hansen CDT]

We have a PM7. We use it primarily for zirconia and wax and occasionally for PMMA. From what I know, PMMA is really hard on a mill so if you are doing a lot of it, I would get a robust mill like the PM7. We don't mill wet in our PM7, but it can. I think people like John Wilson have at least two PM7's so they can dedicate one to wet and one to dry.

 

[[email protected]]

Mostly milling crowns and implants, but bridges and arches are not out of the question. And production will be low to average for a while on these machines.
The budget is more tied to what it can do, than what the cost is. And a big consideration is customer support, I have had bad experiences with roland being a horrible customer support brand, and just leaving us in the dark on fixes and maintenance & repair times.
I think the most important feature is being able to Mill in both materials but mainly PMMA.
and lastly, the lab is just starting, with 1 client, and a focus on surrounding local dentists. I will be operating it with a technician designing and finishing. I have some experience in running mills and using the cam software.

Any of the Versamills from Axsys Dental solutions will do the best job, with great customer support. www.axsysdental.com

 

[tuyere]

We have a PM7. We use it primarily for zirconia and wax and occasionally for PMMA. From what I know, PMMA is really hard on a mill so if you are doing a lot of it, I would get a robust mill like the PM7. We don't mill wet in our PM7, but it can. I think people like John Wilson have at least two PM7's so they can dedicate one to wet and one to dry.

Yeah, a PM7 would be my next recommendation if you're gonna do a lot of PMMA- it has the backbone to not slowly tear itself apart from the forces involved, the big tooling will knock parts out significantly faster than with a Roland's smaller shank, we love that disc changer, and it's generally a very slick, polished package you shouldn't have to wrestle with.

 

[GG - J]

Ditto on the Roland DWX-52D recommendation

ditto

 

[Brett Hansen CDT]

Yeah, a PM7 would be my next recommendation if you're gonna do a lot of PMMA- it has the backbone to not slowly tear itself apart from the forces involved, the big tooling will knock parts out significantly faster than with a Roland's smaller shank, we love that disc changer, and it's generally a very slick, polished package you shouldn't have to wrestle with.

I kind of describe the PM7 as the iphone of mills. It's expensive, but the thing just works and the support is great.

 

[tuyere]

My only qualifier with the PM7 is that you'll trash the spindle rather quickly if you run a lot of metal on it, like the OP mentioned wanting to also explore, and that's not a cheap replacement. zirc, PMMA, emax etc won't slow it down, but metal starts running into the limits of what you actually want to dedicate a PM7 to cutting. It's also a huge pain to switch between dry and wet, but fortunately the OP has already made peace with two separate mills for running metal alongside zirc/pmma.

 

[DaveId]

I kind of describe the PM7 as the iphone of mills. It's expensive, but the thing just works and the support is great.

Just curious, where are you getting great support for the PM7? We have tons of trouble milling (mostly Emax, which is crazy, since it is Ivoclar's machine, material, & software) and with various sensor related issues, the common issue of it not knowing it has a bur or the safety pin in the collet and making you take it out and then telling you it is missing and you have to put it back in. These things don't really get resolutions, when Ivoclar was last out to repair the mill they left out several screws which definitely left us feeling their service was lacking. We just found out that if we want to update our software to a version that has less bugs we have to pay for it, that doesn't seem like good support either.

 

[tuyere]

My biggest beef with Ivoclar is that they gave us essentially no instruction or guidance at the outset- they should be sitting lab staff down for a mandatory full-day training class every time they install a mill instead of the very cursory run-through we got, CNC milling is not trivial to do correctly, even if they like to pretend it's a "one-touch/anybody can use it" machine. Carbon did that when they installed our M2 and it was extremely helpful, and 3D printing is downright trivial to master compared to CNC milling. The technician who set the machine up didn't know what he was talking about and couldn't speak to anything beyond what was in his training manual. They showed us how to set up and run a crown, technically, but gave no guidance on how to so well vs poorly, and as a result we had an abysmal success rate and were making no money at all for a few weeks because of the cost of replacing broken tools. The tech also recommended a completely inadequate maintenance schedule, he had us changing coolant every two months instead of once every 20-25 cases (i.e. every week to 10 days with our production) that was later suggested. Turns out having very clean and grit-free coolant is critical to getting good results with High Finish strategies, who knew!

Our turning point was when we arranged for one of their CAM-specialist techs from New York- someone who actually knew what he was talking about- remote into our lab's CAM PC and do a mini-lecture for the techs on how to set up parts and how to run more challenging cases, and it was extremely helpful. They did it for free, we just had to ask. Our part failure rate plummeted after that.

Also FWIW we've had issues with tool changes as well, and we've mostly addressed them by keeping the collet, tool shanks, and magazine very clean (steam-cleaning them daily or every two days) and replacing any of the magazine inserts that get worn or damaged. A lot of our issues ultimately stemmed from not doing maintenance often enough.

 

[Brett Hansen CDT]

Just curious, where are you getting great support for the PM7? We have tons of trouble milling (mostly Emax, which is crazy, since it is Ivoclar's machine, material, & software) and with various sensor related issues, the common issue of it not knowing it has a bur or the safety pin in the collet and making you take it out and then telling you it is missing and you have to put it back in. These things don't really get resolutions, when Ivoclar was last out to repair the mill they left out several screws which definitely left us feeling their service was lacking. We just found out that if we want to update our software to a version that has less bugs we have to pay for it, that doesn't seem like good support either.

Ivoclar. We don't mill emax with our mill. I do know that gives people a lot more problems than milling dry. Are you on the PM7 Facebook group? I have found good help there before too on some issues. We are also clean our mill twice a week. When we have had an Ivoclar tech come out to service our mill, they have always remarked on how clean ours is.

 

[DaveId]

Ivoclar. We don't mill emax with our mill. I do know that gives people a lot more problems than milling dry. Are you on the PM7 Facebook group? I have found good help there before too on some issues. We are also clean our mill twice a week. When we have had an Ivoclar tech come out to service our mill, they have always remarked on how clean ours is.

Yeah, Emax is the biggest headache we have from this mill. The Ivoclar rep said ours wasn't the worst they saw, but it was not great when I started working here and there is only so much I can do to clean it now. I tend to stay off Facebook, especially for work related things.

 

[Brett Hansen CDT]

Yeah, Emax is the biggest headache we have from this mill. The Ivoclar rep said ours wasn't the worst they saw, but it was not great when I started working here and there is only so much I can do to clean it now. I tend to stay off Facebook, especially for work related things.

Totally understand your sentiments on FB. I stopped posting on my personal FB page during the pandemic. I didn't totally delete my FB because the FB groups I use for work like 3Shape and PM7 and Asiga are essential resources for me.

If we were ever going to emax, we would have a second mill dedicated to milling wet.