In an Australian first, global engineering company Renishaw has installed its AM400 metal additive manufacturing system at full-service dental laboratory, Proslab’s Melbourne facility. Chosen for its improved efficiency and accuracy over traditional methods, the new machine has increased the efficiency, quality and accuracy of Proslab’s removable partial denture production.
Proslab was founded over 30 years ago to provide a one stop shop for Australia and New Zealand’s dental industry. The company is focused on furthering its offering by using technology and was the first to introduce CAD/CAM processes for denture frameworks 15 years ago.
To produce its removable partial dentures, Proslab used computer aided design (CAD), milled the pattern and manufactured using the traditional method, lost-wax casting. The process is time consuming and can lead to reduced accuracy, as a result of human error during the manual processing stage.
“It is very difficult to achieve a consistently high level of accuracy using lost-wax casting,” explained Alex Harris, Applications Engineer at Renishaw. “Additive manufacturing is a highly accurate technique for producing removable partial dentures. Each part is built up in layers of cobalt chrome, directly from the CAD file. This removes the additional casting steps whilst improving efficiency and accuracy.”
Damian Synefias, CEO of Proslab said, “Initially, Renishaw manufactured some test parts to demonstrate the capabilities of the machine. Its dedicated UK medical / dental additive manufacturing team then flew to Australia to conduct detailed training with our staff.
“Incorporating additive manufacturing into the production of dentures required significant changes to Proslab’s internal processes,” however the frameworks we produce are now guaranteed to fit every time,” continued Synefias. “We have increased our turnover as we have improved our turnaround time and eliminated 100 per cent of in-house errors. This means fewer reworks are necessary, benefitting both patients and prosthetists.”
For more information visit .
About Renishaw
UK-based Renishaw is a world leading engineering technologies company, supplying products used for applications as diverse as jet engine and wind turbine manufacture, through to dentistry and brain surgery. It has over 4,000 employees located in the 35 countries where it has wholly owned subsidiary operations.
For the year ended June 2017 Renishaw recorded sales of £536.8 million of which 95% was due to exports. The company’s largest markets are China, the USA, Japan and Germany.
Throughout its history Renishaw has made a significant commitment to research and development, with historically between 14 and 18% of annual sales invested in R&D and engineering. The majority of this R&D and manufacturing of the company’s products is carried out in the UK.
The Company’s success has been recognised with numerous international awards, including eighteen Queen’s Awards recognising achievements in technology, export and innovation.
Further information at www.renishaw.com
Source: Renishaw
