Thanks Jay for your imput....
One of the systems is a 5 axisdry machine- with a 5 axis scanner.....same company is working on a wet mill only in the 10k range...........
As far as waxing, I can't wax a full contour crown, seal margins, get the contacts right, with it ready to sprue in 20 minutes, no way.......Remember, you will also have to block out the die, mark margin, paint on the die hardner, paint 2 layers of die spacer, wait several minutes to dry.......then wax.........If anyone can do this in 30 minutes or less, then scan, or cast or press, I would not want to sell it to any of my doctors .....its going to have high occlusion, out of occlusion and loose, tight or open contacts....... Maybe there are a select group of techs that can do it, and that is rare........There are also techs that can stack 50 units a day in blocks to grind in....
One company charges $1000. to come to your lab for a yearly maintenance service. Others charge much more for a maintenance agreements .
Agreements, and yearly updates can be a real killer for a smaller lab...... and make it extremely expensive to own.........
I think one thing to look at is the speed/extra production an inhouse cad/cam can make knowing every crown will not be made in zirconia, and just how much a milled or outsourced wax patterns can help in production in the transition into (hopefully) more all ceramics zir/emax and less pfms.......
The imes-core machines do seem like a more robust /industrial machine, but what do I know ?.......Their are Ugo's, Honda's and Mercedes out there, the problem is,,,,,,, which is which........and does it make any or much difference. Everyone is selling the best machine, and most of these companies are extremely helpful without the high pressure to sell........
With scanners, I'm learning it can be very time consuming to scan a full model and opposing......Just wondering how many cases can be scanned in one hour for single unit crowns with full arch models??? do you really want to can a bite ? seems likes scanning opposing models would be more accurate but slower, than scanning a bite from a putty bite ? Can you scan the opposing model but scan fewer teeth to speed up the scan time,and at the same time have a more accurate scan-model over the inaccuracies of making a bite to scan ?