In what way is the AG system "closed"? We own the Ceramill Motion II and map 400 scanner and we have used other peoples zirc,..wax and wet milled several different brands of LiS2 (including Emax)and have also accepted stl files from other labs using 3 shape and other software with no problems. The support has been excellent out of Charlotte.What do you see as a problem concerning the arch shaped discs. They actually result in less waste and I guess you would have to try it for a while and you will see that the shape can be an advantage in many cases, also pretty much every supplier now makes them. Oh and the sintron dude...off the hook excellent. I've used Dw, 3 shape, Delcam,and I personally much prefer Exocad.I don't have a horse in the race,..I just run the machine,..but if your asking me what I think about Amann Girbach I would say "WUNDERBAR!"(that's german for "Kicks ass")
I was an early adopter of the new Ceramill system w/ Motion 2, Sintron, the entire package. It is closed is the sense that adding new fixtures/blanks, or running the mill with another CAM software is not possible. Like Affinity, we have been experimenting with finding more cost effective ways of using the mill, more on that later. Having said that, the Motion 2, and the entire cad/cam package is smooth as butter. There are rarely any errors that cannot be easily fixed, and the CAM accepts every type of stl we've thrown at it. Also, the wet milling function has made milling PMMA very predictable.
Lower cost 1 - Order PMMA, wax blanks, and tools directly from Huge dental in China. Glidewell has been relabeling Huge's stuff, at least a few years ago. Their PMMA is the standard by which I judge everything else on the market. It runs $15 per 20 mm wax disc, $16 per 20 mm shaded pmma disc, and $20 per milling bur. On my last order, we added their super translucent zirconis at $130 per 20 mm blank. We have used their products in the past for our 98 mm mill, and have had zero problems.
Lower cost 2 - Low cost milling wax. Save your used PMMA blanks and make a silicone duplicate of the outer rim (we doubled ours). Pour the mold in melted milling wax (leftover pucks or bulk from machinablewax.com). Make barbs in the outer rim of the used PMMA blank in the CAM. Take shrunken wax puck from mold and smush it into the barped PMMA holder. You will have to keep your nested designs a little bit from the edges, and you may have to use the model trimmer to plane the poured pucks prior to use.
Lower cost 3 - Lower cost, but highly wasteful zirconia. We have been experimenting with cutting our 98 mm blanks to fit into empty zolid holders. If Lower cost 1 for zirconia from Huge Dental turns out okay, then we will abandon this approach. Our main goal for this was to be able to mill bruxzir blocks for larger bridges, saving us the hassle of having to stock very thick blanks for our 4 axis mill.
Let me know if you are able to find a 98 mm fixture, and corresponding CAM stuff. We were going to try to convert a new fixture holder as it doesn't appear to be too difficult. Just being able to mill other companies' materials was worth it, and the remaining spaced could still be used in another machine, but alas, we haven't had the time to go down that road yet.
