Micro Bender MB1?

[LabRat23]

We have been looking into a automatic wire bending machine for our clasps for flippers, we think it would really streamline the process of finding people who are good at bending clasps for flippers and basically all our research is pointing us to this machine for what we want. Its a automatic ortho wire bending unit using a program called JawDraw? Was curious has anyone thought about going digital for bending wire in the lab? Also if anyone has any recommendations or stories about this machine or others please share I would love more input from this great community! Thanks!

 

[CoolHandLuke]

not a new technology, its quite reliable, and requires you to design the wire right or you'll just be bending garbage.

 

[LabRat23]

not a new technology, its quite reliable, and requires you to design the wire right or you'll just be bending garbage.

whats a good unit? just got a call back and this price is pretty insane for just wanting to bend wire for c clasps and ball clasps

 

[zero_zero]

We have been looking into a automatic wire bending machine for our clasps for flippers, we think it would really streamline the process of finding people who are good at bending clasps for flippers and basically all our research is pointing us to this machine for what we want. Its a automatic ortho wire bending unit using a program called JawDraw? Was curious has anyone thought about going digital for bending wire in the lab? Also if anyone has any recommendations or stories about this machine or others please share I would love more input from this great community! Thanks!

I say go for it, if I'd be doing lots of bending it would definitely save a lot of time ...

 

[tuyere]

What's the MSRP for one of these, out of curiosity?

 

[LabRat23]

What's the MSRP for one of these, out of curiosity?

retail is around 95k deals drop it to 75 but they get you bad with the yearly license fee about 8-9k a year. I know there has to be cheaper options out there but I'm having troubles finding ones that can do c clasps and ball clasps... so far this is the only one so the price does make sense especially if you do ortho appliances its really not to bad of a deal we did the math for price points and such. its just a bit dicey for just doing removable clasps but it seems like not alot of big labs do outsourcing for just clasps designs so the market would be huge at a national level.

 

[LabRat23]

I say go for it, if I'd be doing lots of bending it would definitely save a lot of time ...

View attachment 43869

love the bender lol I also appreciate you replying to my posts about this and the 3d models, its quite hard to get reply's when it comes to those 3D machines hence even trying to gage the market value of adding a machine like a automated bending unit to the mix and keeping the digital side up for future appliances, if only they all ran on cheap beer and good laughs id get a '"Bender" ASAP if that was the case LOL

 

[Denture Dude]

 

[tuyere]

Just spitballing here, but: I know there have been some open-source CNC wire bender designs developed out there, just not specifically for dental applications- the one I recall was actually intended to bend rectangular coil springs for nonstandard firearm magazines.
Wouldn't be usable for this without a ton of iterating and fiddling, if at all, and you wouldn't get a slick software package that turned designs into gcode, but the wire gauge is in the right neighbourhood, and minimum bend radius is mostly a factor of the bending pins you go with. This seems like one of those things someone could conceivably DIY (with a lot of effort and iteration),much more accessibly than with something like a milling machine where you'd need a fully-equipped machine shop to even think about it.

 

[Denture Dude]

I follow some of the dental specific 3d printer companies to keep an eye on how/what they’re up to. I notice their solution to this is to just design tissue clasps as if if we’re a flexible material when in fact it’s a rigid material. All of a sudden garbage like that is ok.

 

[LabRat23]

I think we could really get it going if we were to basically say to alot of labs that we will bend clasps for them and their flippers and or ortho products so they can save time, that machine does it in under 2 minutes the amount you could crank out in one day would be massive if you had the cliental to back it up order wise. It might be worth it, going to be diving deeper into it this week and the next ill keep you all updated!
Side note: would any lab consider sending out models and having clasps designed on them for the right price(IM NOT ADVERTISING JUST SEEING IF LABS LIKE US HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS) Currently two unnamed large lab corps said they do not do just clasps they only do the whole flipper.

 

[LabRat23]

I follow some of the dental specific 3d printer companies to keep an eye on how/what they’re up to. I notice their solution to this is to just design tissue clasps as if if we’re a flexible material when in fact it’s a rigid material. All of a sudden garbage like that is ok.

we use a TCS unit for our flexible appliances but our doctors do not like pink clasps and its a pain to double shoot a clear subframe/clasps just to have to reshoot the saddles in pink (I have done it a bunch already)

 

[Denture Dude]

we use a TCS unit for our flexible appliances but our doctors do not like pink clasps and its a pain to double shoot a clear subframe/clasps just to have to reshoot the saddles in pink (I have done it a bunch already)

Then the reasonable thing to do would be to charge enough for wire clasps that you can hire someone who knows how to bend them. See how fast the docs change then.

 

[Timfillo]

We have mb1. Can’t say if it’s good or bad. Does it’s job but software is glitchy. Good technician can bend faster then designing for this machine.
However even a kid can bend forms on mb1.
The most annoying is that the software does not know the limitations of the hardware so you can designs a wire but machine just bends random form and you should go step by step to check when it fails.
However their software is just a ui for the app that tells actual coordinates for bending. The language is pretty simple but I still haven’t figured out how to replace their 8k/year software. Wonder if it is possible to adapt pts file for this purpose

 

[Doris A]

retail is around 95k deals drop it to 75 but they get you bad with the yearly license fee about 8-9k a year. I know there has to be cheaper options out there but I'm having troubles finding ones that can do c clasps and ball clasps... so far this is the only one so the price does make sense especially if you do ortho appliances its really not to bad of a deal we did the math for price points and such. its just a bit dicey for just doing removable clasps but it seems like not alot of big labs do outsourcing for just clasps designs so the market would be huge at a national level.

75K up front and 8-9 a year after that. How many clasps are you bending to even begin to think that the price makes sense?!?!

 

[LabRat23]

75K up front and 8-9 a year after that. How many clasps are you bending to even begin to think that the price makes sense?!?!

If I told you you wouldn't believe me LOL its unreal in the flipper land of the westcoast

 

[JKraver]

200 bent wires a month at 10-15? dollars a pop is 2-3k/mo. On the top end of that it will take 25 mo of no profit, 3 months a year would be to pay the license fee. I don't see the ROI are you doing 4-500/mo? Is the cost of a 10c bent wire more on the west coast?

 

[LabRat23]

Then the reasonable thing to do would be to charge enough for wire clasps that you can hire someone who knows how to bend them. See how fast the docs change then.

200 bent wires a month at 10-15? dollars a pop is 2-3k/mo. On the top end of that it will take 25 mo of no profit, 3 months a year would be to pay the license fee. I don't see the ROI are you doing 4-500/mo? Is the cost of a 10c bent wire more on the west coast?

we run about 160 c clasps alone monthly now if we increased our clasp production by 100 we would be able to be profitable but we dont have the clientell to do so hence us on the fence about a purchase this size for now but if we did increase it based on what we charge already we would be able to profit. I cant tell you price point but basically if we were at 250 c clasps alone monthly we would pay it off in a year. Right now we offer 3 different priced clasps and we already have labs inquiring about sending their cases here to bend wire and send it back. If we were charging 10 a clasp we would have to up the price overall of the product to compensate that price tag but we are north of that but nothing crazy we still keep prices competitive for the area. Its almost impossible to find someone who can bend clasps to our standards and our owner can bend a c clasp in a 1 minute and 15 seconds and we just cant find any techs out there with that kind of speed and accuracy to even get clasp bending to 3 minutes the quality goes right out the window based on previous applicants.

 

[Doris A]

.

 

[tuyere]

95K + 9k annually just seems like a totally out-of-proportion cost for what this is, imo. think about how much 5-axis CNC mill you can get for that, and all the many ways that can pay for itself in a not-unreasonable span of time. CNC wire bending is not particularly tricky to do by CNC machine tool standards, and the machinery lacks the huge cast steel/granite forms and hundreds of pounds of precision-ground steel you're paying for there- if nothing else, I'm surprised there isn't more competition in the market to help drive that price point a little closer to earth.