We recently spoke with Peter Harris, Director of Engineering at US-SPINE, about their purchase of a ProJet™ HD3000. US-SPINE, located in Boca Raton, FL, manufactures spinal implants and surgical instruments for surgeons that are used in patients who suffer from various ailments like degenerative disc disease, trauma and scoliosis.
In Peter's words: "Typically during a project life cycle, we would manufacture prototype parts and evaluate these in cadaver labs with surgeons. With the new ProJet™ 3D Printer, we were able to build plastic prototype, uses these parts for evaluation and move the project straight on to production. This saved us about 8 weeks in time plus thousands of dollars in savings. The great thing about the plastic parts is that they are fully functional parts (movable) and they really give one a realistic ‘prototype’ of the implant and instrument. Overall, we are very impressed with our investment and feel that it has paid for itself in the short time we have had it."
We just announced the introduction of Accura® e-Stone™, a new family of materials developed specifically to produce digital-dental models on our stereolithography systems! This material is available in two high contrast colors, peach and green.
With newly introduced dental intraoral and impression scanners, 3D Systems’ stereolithography technology is becoming the industry standard for digital-dental model production, having already been selected by 3M and Sirona for integration into proprietary intraoral scanning manufacturing systems. 3M is in full production utilizing this technology and recently produced their 10,000th case of digital-dental models on the iPro™ SLA® system. Accura® e-Stone™ material is designed to produce dental models from data derived from these scanners without pouring traditional stone models, saving time and money for dentists and dental laboratories and reducing infection risks.
Accura® e-Stone™ material is compatible with all intraoral and impression scanning systems that produce an .stl file to produce accurate, durable models of individual teeth and arches with crisp resolution. Normal dental lab practices, including drilling, grinding and waxing, can be used with Accura® e-Stone™ material. Due to its high accuracy and repeatability, this material can also be used as a fit-check model for all-digital restorations. “Dentists and dental labs are continually looking for ways to grow their business and increase productivity,” said Lee Dockstader, VP of Business Development, 3D Systems, “and we expect Accura® e-Stone™ Material to help them improve their productivity. "
This material is now available for orders at the 3D Systems Pro Parts marketplace at www.3dsystems.com. Visit our dental web site at http://www.toptobottomdental.com for more information on dental applications.
Skatell’s uses CAD/CAM to design its custom pieces, and 3D Systems’ 3D digital design and 3D manufacturing process will be used to produce the pendant. To add excitement to the auction bidding, in place of the finished silver pendant, a wax master printed on our ProJet™ CPX3000 3D Printer will be on display. This offers the highest bidder the option to have Skatell’s customize the final pendant if the winner wants to add some personal touches to the design!
