printing patterns for pressing or casting

[Ruth Iverson]

Wondering if any one is using a wax printer to make patterns for casting or pressing, full contour and understructures. If so, what results are you achieving?

 

[Mountain Goat]

I scan most all of my cases and either send the file for zirconia milling or wax PRINT, I cast for metal, both comping/frames and full cast),and print full contour for pressing emax. Call Dominion Milling Center, they can do both for you, full outsource service or you send your scan files for CAM

 

[Ruth Iverson]

Thanks for responding, I am wondering what you think of the margins and the fits on the bridges. Do you do any adjusting on the patterns when you get them back?

 

[DMC]

I have had four Rapid proto printer....buying another soon.

They are only as good as the data you feed them! Poo goes in.....poo comes out!

We make tons of them everyday and nothing needs adjusting or margins re-sealed. That would be a failure IMO

We can print walls under .1mm but I doubt you could cast that.
$2.95 a unit!

The best scanner without a doubt is the 3M Lava units. They have tremendous data and accuracy. We see Four- times more data points from those scanners compared to anything else.

Secondary anatomy is printed just as you designed, and a printer can make square corners, unlike a CNC mill. Fit is great.

I'd be glad to send ya a sample made from your die/model.

Scott

 

[Gdentallab]

i've read few things about 3d printing.
Where can i have more info about this technology?
Nice deals you're getting ***.

 

[Mark Jackson]

3D printing has it's pros and cons like every technology. At the moment, we choose to mill our wax patterns instead of printing them. It's very, very fast, and we modified ours to use the old burs from our zirconia mill. When they get too used up for that, they are just right for milling wax.

We also use a mold to remelt the pucks, add a few grams of new wax and we have a brand new puck for pennies. We can jam a lot of units into the waxer and it cuts quickly.

We just added two more scan and design centers and we are hoping to have everything in the lab going that way. At that point, we may look at switching to printing, but for now, the waxer works great. Something to consider...

 

[Mike67]

How do the milled wax ups compare to the printed in terms of smoothness, accuracy of the margins ect?

 

[Tunajoe]

Anyone outsourcing to other labs for the waxups?
If so, what's the approximate cost for each waxup?

 

[Mark Jackson]

How do the milled wax ups compare to the printed in terms of smoothness, accuracy of the margins ect?

The wax ups are just as smooth as those I've seem off printers for the most part. They are pretty much ready to invest after you cut off the sprue.

 

[Mountain Goat]

I have done both, print and milled wax. The wax has a smoother texture and can crack easily(since CAD allows exact setting of coping thicknes),also milling will sometimes fail to pick up SHARP angles on apexes and margins which can crack the milled coping if forced down onto die. This can be improved upon with internal fit settings in design with cememt gaps/radius comps/expansion gaps etc....Printing material is sturdier and more accurate in terms of sharp translation of die surface....it prints out the sharp edges and angles and anatomy, but surface texture annoys me. Remember milling is done with a round bur, you can't mill an angle that is less than the bur diameter...round bur into a square corner....Truth be told I would happily take either over conventional waxing.....

 

[patmo141]

Silly question. Are there any systems out there that could print straight onto a die? Seems like you could get amazing accuracy or at least the same accuracy faster if the printer laid down a slightly liquid wax in the first layers and then increased it's precision the further away from the model it got. One of wax's fundamental advantages is the phase shift from liquid to solid allows for it to be adapted to levels of detail which can not be achieved through brute manual/mechanical control. To mill or print it seems counterintuitive other than the advantages of automation vs. by hand and that wax still allows for casting.

Philosophy aside, proof is in the pudding and those margins and anatomy look superb Mark.

-P

 

[DMC]

We can print 200 copings in 4-5 hours.

Maybe you can mill only four an hour.

Milling is waaay more expensive than printing.

My output from printing will be 10x more than milling. Now look at ROI.
Mark, have you figured out what it costs you to mill a crown? I'm sure you have that data as you stated it would be stupid not to know that, right? Include machine time, and service on machine. I think you will not be happy after looking into this. Printing is 10x cheaper than milling and we make a decent profit at $2.95/unit. Crazy, huh?

Take the cost of mill, plus service agreement.....calculate how many copings you can mill in a year (100 a day).....do the math.



You can't ship a milled wax. Wax can'e be milled at .3mm or thinner.

employees melt/crack the milled wax. Don't have that problem with prints.

While your milling wax...the irregular and unpredictable stresses built into the material cause the puck to distort as you remove material. I have many samples of round disks that are now very oval after milling. I had a wax mill and thought it was a POS. I watched bridges pop out before milling ended. Making your own wax blanks is not easy. The cooling time is very important to maintain any sort of consistajcy. Usually a steel pipe is heated and the inside is filled with wax and gently cooled over a long period of time. Then disks are cut trying not to add any heat. 4" Steel pipe (same as 98mm disk after cooling and shrinking) Poor wax blanks equal warped bridges...even before you cut it out of the milled disk! Been there, done that. Hated it.
Wax is still a terrible material!

 

[rkm rdt]

Scott, sorry to stray slightly off topic but you gave me an idea.

When it comes to fabricating a model from an intraoral scan, would it be possible to either mill or print a wax( or similar reuseable material) solid model from the file?
Instead of milling a model with removable dies etc, would it be cheaper / easier to make a silicone dupe of the solid wax model and then just ship the silicone to the lab.This way the lab could pour their own model from the silicone and make as many copies as they need etc.

Basically a silicone impression from a milled/printed model.

Any thoughts?

 

[Mark Jackson]

I guess you use whatever works best for you. In our lab, our milling machine will crank out 60-80 units per day easily. I don't know about any of the distortion issues Scott talks about. We don't see any of that.

Our wax mill works perfectly, and I can buy six of them for the cost of a printer.

For now, it's a slam dunk.

 

[charles007]

Mark I love that almost Carolina Blue wax, what brand is it? I'm guessing Talladium or Glidewell ?

 

[paulg100]

Liking the idea of those cheaper wax mills Mark, so do they run from any cad that outputs stl ? ie you can run it from 3 shape?

 

[Mark Jackson]

Liking the idea of those cheaper wax mills Mark, so do they run from any cad that outputs stl ? ie you can run it from 3 shape?

Yes, it will take any STL file. We send the files straight from Delcam Mill. The wax comes from Roland.

 

[DMC]

I obviously had inferior materials.
That was my issue.

A wax mill does not need to be a million dollar investment.
I had a Roland, but my CAM sucked Bologna and the material was terrible stuff from CADBLU. Home-made bull-5hit! That was years ago. I'm sure the newer Rolands with any good CAM and good material can produce repeatable, acceptable results.

This was long before DelCam and others offered solutions for our Dental shapes and materials. Today is a dfferent story.



Mark, printing is 10x cheaper. I swear. We can print 200 units every 5 hours for pennys. The resolution is better than any .6mm bur can produce. Square corners and lines and secondary anatomy cone out in 30 micron resolution. Whatever you design will be printed for pennys....including all the super fine detail.

I had a roland, and four printers.....many CAM softwares....buying another printer. LOVE THEM! I will never mill wax again. Can you really mill wax for under $.25?? I seriously doubt it. We make good profit on $2.95 a unit prints, believe it or not.

 

[paulg100]

Nice, how much are delcam charging for their cam software module these days?

I thought it was big $$

 

[Ruth Iverson]

about the printed patterns, do you think the material used would cause short margins? where are you getting your material?