Direct printing of aligners. What do companies say?
We personally handled different types of materials to assess the quality status of the resins on the market, testing not so much the veracity of the product and the new era being created around the direct printed aligner, but the ease with which aligners can be printed and the necessary post curing.
Of course, all suggested procedures were followed, both in terms of compatible printer and post curing with appropriate curing units.
The result was not entirely satisfactory. Even if printing is successful (resin and printer parameterized as in the first figure), the post-curing phase is not easy. The material cannot be cleaned with solvents, but it is almost impossible to remove excess material without a solvent. Using glycol, which is less aggressive than IPA, the result improves over “liquid free” cleaning, which tends to harden the material and expose it to crystallization. But the bath in the liquid must be minimal, otherwise the material property is changed.
What we have tested but not directly, through parent company, is a new process, and by process we mean a well-defined sequence from printer selection, to CAM software, to material, to post curing all produced by the same company.
We follow this new approach with interest. We follow the change.
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