As you regular readers know, I'm all in on 3D printing. I've spent the last year and have continued into 2025 with a deep dive into the tech and all it can do. It's been an incredible and enlightening journey.
The really interesting part of this exploration has been how these systems just keep getting better. Often when technology is being developed we see a big splash as something enters the market and then there is a bit of a pause as users adopt. This pause in progress allows a technology to gain a toehold in the market as users learn. It also allows the companies to continue research & development to create progress. After a year or so, there's a 'Version 2.0' and often the cycle repeats itself. Every generation moves the technology forward and it becomes a cycle of develop, user adoption, repeat.
Interestingly enough, 3D printing hasn't necessarily followed that same normal cycle. Instead, this tech keeps progressing at an amazingly fast rate. The rapid progress and change I'm seeing isn't necessarily in the hardware. Sure 3D printers are getting faster and more accurate, but that isn't the thing I'm talking about. The more amazing changes and advances I'm seeing are in the design process.
I've always felt that the real pain point in adoption of this tech hasn't been hardware related. It's always been pretty easy to print things. No, the problem has always been in design. It's been the process of actually creating the projects for the printer to fabricate that has kept people from adopting the tech. Now it's easy to design projects and *that* is why I'm predicting that 3D printing is about to make a dramatic and massive change in dentistry.
We all know that artificial intelligence has had a massive impact on our profession and our world. It's become the 'secret sauce' that powers so much of our lives. We often don't even realize it's there. From a geek's perspective, AI is a lot like the code behind Java. When Java came along, suddenly webpages became incredibly interactive. It changed our lives, but other than the people who applied the code to those pages in the background, the end user only saw the end result. Things got easier. AI is a lot like that.
So what has this got to do with 3D printing? Simply put, AI has greatly simplified the design process. If Instagram required a user to have an in-depth knowledge of Photoshop, the number of users would be tiny. But when you can take a photo with your phone and almost instantaneously send it to Instagram, usage explodes. No one has the time to be an expert in a particular software platform. The secret is to make the user experience seamless *and* easy.
I'm now expanding my 3D printing horizons by working with more design and nesting systems. This next endeavor is going to be with the design platform AccuDesign from Shining 3D. For those of you who aren't familiar with the company, they've been on the market for a while now, although probably not as long as some of the players that you've previously heard of. However, that doesn't mean they are playing catch up. No, that isn't the case at all. Instead, like Athena being born fully formed and in armor from the skull of Zeus, Shining 3D came to market with an entire mature suite of products and solutions. The company not only has a line of 3D printing solutions, they also have a complete line of digital dental solutions. Add to that the fact that the company is celebrating it's 20th year in business and it's pretty easy to see that Shining 3D is poised to become an important part of the dental 3D industry.
The company has intraoral scanners, facial extraoral scanners, resins, as well as several 3D printers, and all the necessary hardware to complete 3D printed projects. Shining 3D also has several other specialty divisions with a presence in medicine, metrology, and engineering. My point in brining this up is that this company has a serious presence in multiple professions and that means they have capital and strong research and development.
Their design software, AccuDesign is pretty slick. While I'm not well versed in it... yet, it utilizes AI to simplify much of the design process as well as utilizing AI in the nesting process and even utilizes AI to help increase efficiency when printing multiple projects at the same time.
Recently I've spent some time tinkering with AccuDesign, but I'm about to take one of my deep dives into the system. I'll be posting more as I get some experience, but my initial take is really favorable. I've been around enough of these systems to be able to tell that this one has some features that aren't readily available in other design suites out there. Stay tuned for updates. I'll be posting more of my experiences and projects as I get more experience with this design system.
You don't have to have a 3D printer to attend. In fact, I'd prefer you NOT have a printer. Rather than buy something, learn to use it, and try to implement it... my idea is for you to learn what you need to know and *then* decide to make a purchase afterwards. So plan on coming out to Las Vegas on June 21-22, 2025 and learn how 3D printing can change your office in so, so many ways. For more info, click this link. If you're interested in other courses offered by other incredible and well known presenters, follow this link for all the courses Medidenta has planned. If you have any questions or would like more info on my Medidenta courses, please leave a comment and I'll try and give you my very best answers. One thing I can guarantee is that if you attend, we are going to have fun!
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