CoolHandLuke
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theres no benefit as of now for a "Lab" to be buying a swiss machine to manufacture homemade implant parts for 3 reasons:
1. the cost of the unit and time to produce are too high to have a safe and reliable and fast ROI. spending half-a-million dollars on such a machine would necessitate adding cost to the front end to pay for the machine; this is not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination.
2. doctors want implant manufacturer-specific certified parts. buying the parts ready-made is more cost effective and assures certification. getting certified as a manufacturing center for different implants may mean another enormous investment and may result in the inability to manufacture other parts; so for example if you were nobel certified then 3i may decide you were not allowed to get certified by them for political reasons.
3. retooling these machines for new implants, or making partials, is a big undertaking. it is not as plug-and-play as some may hope. thats a downside. thats more or less why people invest in Haas before bigger more dedicated machinery.
now, do i think we'll see consolidation in the future? no absolutely not. the political measures in place (such as requiring 510k product clearance) means very few investors will start up new implant companies in the future. bureaucracy kills innovation. theres a lot of bureaucracy in place at the moment - and for very good reason. we like this bureaucracy because it is ensuring that we get uniformity in the products we buy to make implants. under a less restricted government yes we might get cheaper parts but there would be tons of problems with quality.
so no, i think it serves nobody to be buying these big machines because they cannot be put to enough use for a stable return on investment, and until the political landscape changes (it won't) theres no real way to realistically increase its ROI without resorting to manufacturing non-dental products like milling watch housings or other small ceramic parts.
1. the cost of the unit and time to produce are too high to have a safe and reliable and fast ROI. spending half-a-million dollars on such a machine would necessitate adding cost to the front end to pay for the machine; this is not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination.
2. doctors want implant manufacturer-specific certified parts. buying the parts ready-made is more cost effective and assures certification. getting certified as a manufacturing center for different implants may mean another enormous investment and may result in the inability to manufacture other parts; so for example if you were nobel certified then 3i may decide you were not allowed to get certified by them for political reasons.
3. retooling these machines for new implants, or making partials, is a big undertaking. it is not as plug-and-play as some may hope. thats a downside. thats more or less why people invest in Haas before bigger more dedicated machinery.
now, do i think we'll see consolidation in the future? no absolutely not. the political measures in place (such as requiring 510k product clearance) means very few investors will start up new implant companies in the future. bureaucracy kills innovation. theres a lot of bureaucracy in place at the moment - and for very good reason. we like this bureaucracy because it is ensuring that we get uniformity in the products we buy to make implants. under a less restricted government yes we might get cheaper parts but there would be tons of problems with quality.
so no, i think it serves nobody to be buying these big machines because they cannot be put to enough use for a stable return on investment, and until the political landscape changes (it won't) theres no real way to realistically increase its ROI without resorting to manufacturing non-dental products like milling watch housings or other small ceramic parts.
