if i may, let me throw in a few cents worth of experience here, as we have now had the laserdenta OpenCAD system since august 2010. while i dont know much about the sales figures, here is how wegot through the "1 year growing pains" that come with this and many other machines.
1. in the first place, we did not know much about sintering, or colouring. when we outsourced that previously, it was already done. so getting the sintering time down was problem number 1. fit, polish, and translucency were big issues, and kinking that out isnt easy to do when the company providing you with your zirconia also can't help you, and the sintering machine company doe not have english support (at the time they didnt, they do now).
2. shade. this one may sound like a fallacy, but NO (repeat: NO) staining/dipping solution that we have come across other than zirkonzahn have had any explicit instructions to the use of their kit. no salesperson was able to direct us how to use Vita/s YZ dip system, the GC kit trims off and doesnt absorb into the zirconia, and NOBODY explains this to you from the get-go. by the time you finish working out the kinks in the kit, you are halfway through it and might need a new one very soon.
3. zirconia remake factor. stellar, this one. over time we have probably made 3 units for every 1 that we sold; it takes a while between getting zirconia that doesnt crumble to pieces in your hand, and stains that stain properly, and techs that dont drill through the final product, nevermind doctors who layer on 1mm of mother effing glue and end up grinding the heck out of the anatomy you worked so hard on.
4. inevitable unexplicable machine errors. every so often, no matter how hard you worked on your system, it encounters an error, that is much like the check engine light on your car; DING! please pay someone 1000$ to continue. we've had it where the milling machine's tooling arm doesnt *Exactly* repeat the pickup/place position, and ends up pushing the tool through the hole, and although the bur isn not broken, it is now not useable, as the collar rides too high on the shank and the machine cannot pick it up anymore. DING!! plaease order a new bur.
5. supplier no supplying. when it's crunch time, you need your product out the door, and you need to have product in order to make product. we place orders every 2 weeks like clockwork, even if we dont need new pucks. why? suppliers tend to back order on us; most recently we've been on back order for Metoxit blocks since JANUARY 2012. because of this, we've switched suppliers. i will not name names.
if its not one thing its another - and no estimated cost of a machine is even remotely close to the actual cost of operating a machine. you can't seriously sit there and not factor in the most crucial factor of all: the cohith factor. Come On How In The Hell.
i suspect the zirkonzahn machine and all the things they provide will come at a premium pricepoint. and you'll be obligated to only use their stuff, and you won't get the proper results when you combine other products in the process.
