The ideal combination for 3D printing dental prostheses – J5 DentaJet™ and TrueDent™ Resin from Stratasys®

Having already written here about the basic possibilities within dental 3D printing, today I would like to focus on a specific indication – and on the ideal combination for making this indication possible.

This blog post will be divided into two parts. First, I will briefly and concisely present both components, i.e. the J5 DentaJet™ 3D printer and the TrueDent™ resin, and introduce their special characteristics. Then I will show how the symbiosis of these two components creates the ideal platform for realistic and colourfast dentures.

J5 DentaJet™

The J5 DentaJet™ was launched by Stratasys® in 2021 and has quickly proven to be an absolute productivity booster. Whether for dental practices or dental laboratories, the J5 DentaJet™ has taken the industry by storm.

The J5 DentaJet™ has achieved this particularly with the ability to print five different materials simultaneously. This means that multiple print runs or even multiple printers are no longer necessary for full-colour indications.

Furthermore, the J5 DentaJet™ impresses with breathtaking precision in the production of dental indications. Especially for indications such as dentures, such precision is essential to provide a safe and long-lasting solution for the patient.

Its large build volume and small footprint have also contributed to the J5 DentaJet™ making such a big impression on the dental industry. This advantage is made possible by PolyJet technology, which eliminates the need for a large photopolymer vat by simply jetting the component layer by layer onto a turntable.

Last but not least, the safe working environment of the J5 DentaJet™ must also be emphasised. After the material cartridges have been inserted, the J5 DentaJet™ works completely automatically. This means that material handling of uncured resin is not necessary, which greatly increases safety in dental laboratories and practices.

TrueDent™ Resin

At LMT Lab Day Chicago 2023, Stratasys® presented a new dental resin for its already extensive portfolio – and the unique selling point for this new dental resin was to capitalise the word ‘unique’. Colour-fast and true-to-life dentures for long-term mucosal contact.

This USP could be directly underpinned with an FDA approval. Approval for mucosal contact in the EU by the European Commission for Medical Devices should take a little longer – but since December 2024 it has also been approved in the EU for temporary mucosal contact.

Another feature that makes TrueDent™ Resin interesting for a great many dentists and dental laboratories is its unique level of customisation. TrueDent™ Resin is available in five different versions in the colours transparent, white, cyan, yellow and magenta, which allows an uncountable number of shades to be printed.

To make this shade selection even better, Stratasys® uses the renowned VITA shade library to provide 10 gum and even 16 tooth shades at the push of a button. These VITA shades are highly valued in the dental industry as the shades that most closely match reality, and enable the TrueDent™ Resin to provide an even better fit for the patient.

Together with the J5 DentaJet™, the TrueDent™ Resin has outstanding precision. Whether partial or full dentures – with the TrueDent™ Resin, precise and exact indications for the patient are a breeze.

J5 DentaJet™ + TrueDent™

To date, it should be clear that both the printer and the material are convincing in detail. However, the combination of these two components takes the advantages to a new level – especially for the production of dental prostheses.

We will now look at three important aspects of the production of dentures using the combination of J5 DentaJet™ and TrueDent™ Resin. I will repeatedly draw comparisons between traditional production and 3D printing with the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ to illustrate why this platform represents such a huge step forward for the dental industry.

Precision

Precision is essential for dental prostheses, for dental laboratories and dentists as well as for patients. This is because a prosthesis that does not fit properly can cause severe pain, and of course, such a painful prosthesis needs to be replaced.

Since the health insurance company pays a fixed rate for each prosthesis to a dentist, which is not increased if the dental laboratory or dentist makes a mistake, the manufacturers of the imprecise prosthesis are left with the manufacturing costs for the new prosthesis.

Although conventional methods are now relatively precise and painful production errors are rare, any occurrence is one too many for everyone involved.

With the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™, such occurrences are a thing of the past. Additive manufacturing digitises the entire process of manufacturing the dental prosthesis. Instead of creating an impression, which tends to be imprecise and lacking in detail, an intraoral scanner is used to create an ideal digital image of the inside of the mouth.

This digital image can also be edited at any time using CAD programs should an imprecise scan occur. Every tiny detail can be examined and edited in this digital format to ensure a perfectly fitting prosthesis.

However, this guarantee only applies if the printer that ultimately implements the design can maintain this precision. But as explained in the first part of this blog post, fortunately for dental professionals, both the J5 DentaJet™ and the TrueDent™ Resin are known for precisely this.

The PolyJet technology of the J5 DentaJet™ ensures a process without any distortion. This is achieved, among other things, by in-mashine curing, which means that the component does not have to be removed and placed in another device for post-curing. This ensures uniform precision even in the thinnest layers, which can be as thin as 18 µ with the J5 DentaJet™.

The TrueDent™ Resin makes ideal use of this technology. While traditionally the base, i.e. the gum mask, and the teeth have to be produced separately and then the teeth have to be attached to the base, the TrueDent™ Resin prints full dentures in one piece. This completely eliminates human error from the production process and ensures maximum consistency.

This uniform process leads us to another important feature in which the combination of J5 DentaJet™ and TrueDent™ Resin excels. The production time.

Speed

The time needed to produce a dental prosthesis plays a huge role in a patient's well-being. Particularly with full dentures, quick assistance is essential to improve the patient's quality of life.

Of course, the dental laboratory or dentist also benefits from faster production. More dentures produced means more patients treated, and more patients treated means more revenue.

It was not easy to obtain precise data on the duration of production using conventional production methods. While the entire process takes between three and six weeks, depending on the type of prosthesis, this time also includes patient appointments, taking impressions and other intermediate steps.

According to my research, the actual production time also varies greatly, even with conventional methods. However, on average, it can be said that the actual production time for a full denture is approximately 16 hours. Depending on the size, capacity and technical equipment of the producer, this time can of course be shortened or extended.

But how does the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ perform in this essential factor? According to a large number of tests by Stratasys®, this combination can complete a full printing process within 11 to 13 hours, depending on the size of the dentures.

The time saving seems to be decent, but not world-changing. Well, the attentive reader will surely have noticed that I used the plural of denture in the last paragraph. That's because a complete printing process includes not just one, but up to 34 full dentures.

Using our maths skills from primary school, conventional methods would take 544 hours or over 22 full days to produce the same number of full dentures. Taking our maths skills to secondary school, we can determine that the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ reduces production time for 34 full dentures by over 97%, even if we take the 13 hours.

Of course, you don't always need 34 full dentures at once. So what if you need fewer at once? Of course, the percentage time reduction will decrease, but even for a single model, it is still 18.75%. 18.75% of the time that can be invested in other work and thus promises higher productivity.

As the saying goes: time is money. And money is the appropriate keyword, because another important factor in the production of dentures is, of course, the costs.

Costs

In the health sector, the patient's well-being is of course the top priority, but of course a profit must also be made here. A dental laboratory or a dentist that does not work economically can ultimately no longer provide any well-being to their patients within a very short time.

Therefore, the aspect of production costs is also of the utmost importance for the manufacture of dentures. However, public information on these production costs is very rare. In addition, I did not want to rely on a single source of information on this point, as a price gap would not be taken into account.

Even after extensive research, I was unable to find exact information on production costs. However, several dental laboratories provided me with information on how much they charge dentists for a full denture.

According to my sources, a dentist pays an average of between 550 and 600 euros for a full denture (UJ and LJ), i.e. both the gum mask and the teeth, including attachment. Prices are on average lower in northern and eastern Germany than in the west or south.

Now, a comparison seems difficult – after all, a dental laboratory could charge the same price from the dentist despite reduced production costs. However, since the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ is also ideal for dental practices thanks to its small footprint and safe working environment, a comparison is nonetheless appropriate.

Fortunately for us, the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ at least provides relatively accurate data on the material costs per full denture from Stratasys®. According to their information, these amount to approximately 30 US dollars, which is the equivalent of approximately 28.56 € (as of February 2024).

Of course, labour costs are also added to these material costs. However, since the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ works highly autonomously, the time that a dental technician has to spend at the printer itself is very short.

However, let's assume for the sake of argument that a dental technician would have to monitor the entire printing process. As previously mentioned, the printing time for a single model is 11 to 13 hours. For this comparison, we use the maximum value of 13 hours and add an additional hour for the set-up time.

According to Stepstone, the average salary of a dental technician is 34,900 euros gross annual income (as of February 2024). To make things difficult for the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™, we will simply round up generously to 40,000 euros.

Calculated on an hourly basis, this makes 19.23 euros for a full-time job with 40 hours per week. Of course, the employer's contributions must be added to this, but due to the large number of individual adjustments, in particular, supplementary health insurance contributions, these cannot be calculated uniformly. To make things even more difficult for the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™, we take the highest additional rate in the country of 4.4% and end up with around 23.65 euros per hour – excluding levies, contributions to the employers' liability insurance association and other individualities.

In order not to strain our rusty maths skills any further, I will simply summarise the result. In this example, the labour and material costs would amount to €359.66, which is well below the costs for an external production – despite the clearly unfair conditions.

This calculation should clearly show that the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ can undoubtedly save a lot of costs – for every single denture. This means that the return on investment is achieved in no time, even with a rather lower production volume.

Conclusion

With the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™, Stratasys® has created the ideal platform for the production of dental prostheses. Whether partial or full dentures – the combination of the J5 DentaJet™ 3D printer and TrueDent™ resin guarantees maximum productivity and customisation.

With the MPG approval of Class I in December 2024, TrueDent™ can be used as an ideal tool for the production of temporary dentures. And as soon as the European Commission for Medical Devices has approved it for permanent contact with the oral mucosa, it is truly only a matter of time before this platform becomes established in the dental industry as the top dog for dentures.

To be one of the first to use this platform, you can purchase the J5 DentaJet™ TrueDent™ from us now!

Thank you for your attention – and see you in the next blog post!