3D PRINTING IN DENTISTRY

Clear Aligners

3D printing allows us to design and fabricate clear aligners in house instead of sending a case to a larger company. Sometimes a patient’s specific case may still require an outside source, but for many small adjustments to straighten teeth, we can now complete everything in office meaning treatment is more achievable for many patients. Since we are bypassing the lab cost, we are abl to offere different price tiers depending on how much tooth movement you actually want. If you only want to move a couple teeth, only pay to move those teeth! If you still want to straighten everything, then let us know.

Ask us for a free consult to see if our in house aligners are right for you.

Surgical Guides for Implants

Surgical guides are stints with pre-designed holes that allow us to place an implant at a specific location, depth, and direction. This allows us to place implants in the most optimal place to allow the patient to have a tooth successfully restored. With an intraoral scan (digital impression), 3D X-ray (cone beam), and some preliminary planning through specialized software, we are able to perform the implant surgery quickly and accurately. Many times patients will tell us that implant placement is less stressful and has a quicker recovery than extracting a tooth!

Ask us if implants are right for you!

Night Guards/Occlusal Guards

Night guards or occlusal guards are specially designed mouth pieces that fit over your teeth to wear at night. Many patients can benefit from a nightguard due to night time clenching or grinding. Over time, your natural teeth will begin to wear down and break from the added stress. A nightguard allows you to protect your teeth, while also possibly relieving symptoms such as sore jaw muscles and morning headaches.

With digital intraoral scanning and 3D printing, that means a quick delivery of your device without all the goopy mess of impression materials that so many patients dislike. Many times we can have the nightguard ready for you in as little as a day. 3D printing allows us to store the file digitally as well, so if you break or lose your nightguard, we can simply print you another one! Cutting out the lab cost allows us to make nightguards for around half of what one would normally cost.

Ask us if you might benefit from a custom occlusal guard.

3D Printed Dentures

Many times when someone is first getting dentures, a temporary denture will be made for them to have the same day of the tooth extractions. By printing dentures for this intermediate time while a patient is healing, it allows us to have a product ready very quickly. Since it is a digital file and saved as well, it is relatively easy to replace if something happens to it, such as if your dog eats it, which is much more common than most people think. Ask us how we know! We are able to create an identical product in a very short time if it is damaged.

Along with full dentures, sometimes a patient may want something temporary to fill in where they might be missing a few teeth. We can now design and print “flippers” or temporary partial dentures. And just like the full dentures, if something happens to it, we can print another at a fraction of the cost for the patient.

As this technology improves and newer resins are coming to market, we are now also starting to offer definitive dentures that can be printed. Rather than taking 1-2 months to get your final denture from sending things back and forth to a lab, we can make a denture in as few as 3 appointments that are only a few days apart.

Ask us if a 3D printed denture might be right for you!