Anyone Milling CoCr or Ti abutments in PM5?

[elichezshaw]

Wondering about milling our abutments in house in our PM5. Anyone else doing this? If so, how’s it going?

 

[tuyere]

We considered using our PM7 for this, and while it's very doable, we were generally warned off of relying on one for metal milling- running metal frequently, especially a real beast like CoCr, will significantly decrease the lifespan of the spindle and will generally cause issues you otherwise won't generally run into much with a PM7. I think an Ivoclar tech said we should expect spindle lifespan to be halved, for starters. We ended up going with an imescore 350i+ for our metal- it's a frustrating machine that's constantly needing recalibration and diagnostic work done to keep part quality up, and this is something I've heard from other operators as well, but it's certainly a sturdy enough milling platform for dental metal milling. The PM7 isn't quite as much mill as you'll want to be running metal all day.

...I'm making some assumptions about how many cases you'd actually be running, though, so it depends. No harm in occasionally running metal if the mill's usual fare is less onerous. I don't know how much it being a PM5 changes things here, but it probably makes things more difficult, if anything.

 

[cadfan]

Tuyere you have 350 i with absolute encoder ?? Does the whole mill need constantly calib or just the preform holder vs preforms ??

 

[tuyere]

Tuyere you have 350 i with absolute encoder ?? Does the whole mill need constantly calib or just the preform holder vs preforms ??

Both, in my experience- it's frustrating, there's no reason a 5-axis mill that's operating well within normal conditions and not crashing should have to mill calibration artifacts every week like we do. This is consistent with what I've heard from both support techs as well as other dental labs. It's not a hugely onerous thing to run a 312 job every Monday, but it's very stark sitting next to a PM7 that will chug along happily with maybe one calibration a quarter, if not biannually. That's not counting the more involved 5-axis calibrations or the X(iirc) axis that the 312 doesn't touch, both of which are supposed to be performed by service techs because you need to transfer values to .ini files in your CAM and it's easy to screw up.

RE: the fixtures, we use DESS and medentika, neither is particularly stable long-term, but the medentika is significantly worse. We've had to recalibrate ours once every couple months in perpetuity, and that's another one that's supposed to only be done by service techs, because you need calculators and job files that usually aren't given to end-users.

Overall i'm not impressed by imes-icore machines, mills like this wouldn't be tolerated in general industry because better alternatives are easy to find. I have other gripes, like the lousy UI, lack of polish, and the deliberately-poor localization you often get from places that think a little too highly of their own engineering prowess, but the lack of stability- and lack of user tools to address that lack of stability- is definitely the most aggravating factor that costs us the most money. And we do most of our equipment support internally! Can't imagine having to do paid service visits every time the Medentika abutments start milling off-axis again.

 

[ANoobTech]

My boss has been eyeballing a 350i from a business friend - hopefully we get lucky..

 

[Affinity]

Thats a pricey mill to burn the spindle up.. Ive run a couple dozen in my imes without having to re-cal, but I dont remove the dess fixture, its dedicated for abutments. If youre just doing a few and then switching back, the calibration can be time consuming depending on the cam, for hyperdent its a calculator spreadsheet you need to enter your values in.

 

[Affinity]

@sideshowbob mills ti in his 350i..

Hearing that milling Ti cuts your spindle life in half is good enough reason to double the collet size. I tried milling abutments in my DOF, like I said, expensive to replace.

 

[tehnik]

We mill ti with 350 pro and we calibrate the machine maybe quarterly... We have medentika holder always fixed and never unscrew it.

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

Both, in my experience- it's frustrating, there's no reason a 5-axis mill that's operating well within normal conditions and not crashing should have to mill calibration artifacts every week like we do. This is consistent with what I've heard from both support techs as well as other dental labs. It's not a hugely onerous thing to run a 312 job every Monday, but it's very stark sitting next to a PM7 that will chug along happily with maybe one calibration a quarter, if not biannually. That's not counting the more involved 5-axis calibrations or the X(iirc) axis that the 312 doesn't touch, both of which are supposed to be performed by service techs because you need to transfer values to .ini files in your CAM and it's easy to screw up.

RE: the fixtures, we use DESS and medentika, neither is particularly stable long-term, but the medentika is significantly worse. We've had to recalibrate ours once every couple months in perpetuity, and that's another one that's supposed to only be done by service techs, because you need calculators and job files that usually aren't given to end-users.

Overall i'm not impressed by imes-icore machines, mills like this wouldn't be tolerated in general industry because better alternatives are easy to find. I have other gripes, like the lousy UI, lack of polish, and the deliberately-poor localization you often get from places that think a little too highly of their own engineering prowess, but the lack of stability- and lack of user tools to address that lack of stability- is definitely the most aggravating factor that costs us the most money. And we do most of our equipment support internally! Can't imagine having to do paid service visits every time the Medentika abutments start milling off-axis again.

every week? holy crap!
we mill ti all day every day with the 350i+ and rarely need a calibration. we swap between abutment holders and ti pucks for RPD frames. i know another lab owner churning out RPD frames with his 350I+ daily too, no weekly calibrations. yikes!

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

that said, i cant get the 350i+ to mill ceramic, haha. what a trade off!

 

[tuyere]

every week? holy crap!
we mill ti all day every day with the 350i+ and rarely need a calibration. we swap between abutment holders and ti pucks for RPD frames. i know another lab owner churning out RPD frames with his 350I+ daily too, no weekly calibrations. yikes!

Every week is overcautious, but it wanders enough that we keep getting burned by assuming things are fine for weeks on end that I've gradually ratcheted the 312 frequency up from once a month to once every two weeks to weekly. Always possible we got a lemon mill, this is the only 350i+ I've personally worked with so I don't have a huge basis of comparison, but our sister lab has two and they've griped about similar issues.

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

Every week is overcautious, but it wanders enough that we keep getting burned by assuming things are fine for weeks on end that I've gradually ratcheted the 312 frequency up from once a month to once every two weeks to weekly. Always possible we got a lemon mill, this is the only 350i+ I've personally worked with so I don't have a huge basis of comparison, but our sister lab has two and they've griped about similar issues.

i am happy to report ours has had no issues with milling the ti.
it does not, however, like ceramic.

 

[tuyere]

It's also worth mentioning that our bread and butter metal is CoCr, which is very hard on spindles, maybe running nothing but Ti makes less of a mess of the mill's pots and pans.
What ceramic are you trying to run?

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

It's also worth mentioning that our bread and butter metal is CoCr, which is very hard on spindles, maybe running nothing but Ti makes less of a mess of the mill's pots and pans.
What ceramic are you trying to run?

i have heard that for Chrome.
any ceramic c14 blocks....tried about a dozen brands. a handful of different branded tools too. i should note the reseller has been rather horrible on the support side, so after more than 12mo of attempting it i have shelved the idea of milling ceramic on the imes. generally, the mill is being used to cut titanium nearly all day anyway so its not like a huge loss. that was the main purpose for it, just would have liked the 'extras'. we will budget in a different wet mill for ceramics one day if the need arises.

 

[tuyere]

We bought a PM7 to be an emax-dedicated machine, and it's very good for that, but I know we had a very high breakage rate until we got an Ivoclar technician to give our staff a quick one-hour lecture on best practices for CAM setup. Seems very sensitive to any issues with insertion angle, support geometry, even stuff like freshness of coolant can be make-or-break if we're trying to use high-definition milling strategies. Issues that don't phase a ductile material like metal can render emax jobs completely non-viable.

 

[Affinity]

Are the PM7s made at the wieland factory?

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

We bought a PM7 to be an emax-dedicated machine, and it's very good for that, but I know we had a very high breakage rate until we got an Ivoclar technician to give our staff a quick one-hour lecture on best practices for CAM setup. Seems very sensitive to any issues with insertion angle, support geometry, even stuff like freshness of coolant can be make-or-break if we're trying to use high-definition milling strategies. Issues that don't phase a ductile material like metal can render emax jobs completely non-viable.

that seems like overkill (or overpriced) for dedicated ceramic milling. i think someone else on the forums said they do the same.

i would imagine that glass is def a bit more tricky to nail down. there's a lot less forgiveness to it in comparison to metals like you mentioned. if i didnt have 2 perfectly fine pressing ovens that are long paid off, maybe i would consider pushing the issue more with the imes but i just cannot keep dumping time, effort, and countless broken tools and cad blocks at the problem with little to no help from tech support. (their biggest solution was calibrate and tighten the collet for every single job...which isnt practical at all)

 

[Affinity]

I have the ability to mill glass too but I havent even tried, the time savings is nice, but keeping all those expensive blocks/ tools in stock and only getting one crown per block, it just doesnt seem as profitable as pressing. Even if you can mill 6 at a time, you can press 6 just as fast with no wear on a $100k machine.

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

I have the ability to mill glass too but I havent even tried, the time savings is nice, but keeping all those expensive blocks/ tools in stock and only getting one crown per block, it just doesnt seem as profitable as pressing. Even if you can mill 6 at a time, you can press 6 just as fast with no wear on a $100k machine.

that is true. it was more of using down time on the mill to keep it busy (currently theres not much downtime anymore), and because a few clients would prefer CAD lithium disilicate crowns

 

[tehnik]

We are milling emax with 350 pro and after strategy update we basically have 0 problems, using orignal imes burs.