Twenty years of SLA technology has laid a solid foundation for digital dental applications
It is a stable development trend of the international oral processing industry to move towards digitalization in an all-round way. The rapid development of digital technology and its application in oral clinical medicine, as well as three-dimensional imaging and optical scanning technology have enriched the access to oral clinical data. 3D printing technology has also become one of the hot spots in the application of stomatology. 3D printing, as a special manufacturing technology with significant digitization, has become a link in the dental digital processing chain.
And through the data flow, the oral diagnosis, design, and production processes are connected together, forming a fully digital process for dental product processing. For stomatology, digital technology has been and is rapidly changing the traditional diagnosis and treatment model of stomatology, such as: CAD/CAM technology for oral fixed restoration (one-hour tooth wear), digital aesthetic restoration DSD, implant guide plate to guide implant surgery, application of technologies such as digital surgery design in oral and maxillofacial surgery. It has already changed the oral diagnosis and treatment in our traditional impression, and will increasingly change all aspects of stomatology - medical quality and efficiency, doctors' clinical diagnosis and treatment process, technicians and nurses' working mode, patients' feelings and clinical information management, etc. .
Uniontech company has been deeply involved in the application of various fields for 20 years. Its application in the medical field is very early. It started to deploy the medical application market 15 years ago. It is one of the earliest enterprises in China to apply 3D printing technology to the medical field. When the Wenchuan Earthquake occurred in 2008, UnionTech shouldered the social responsibilities of Chinese private enterprises and jointly organized the "RP for Wenchuan Earthquake Donation Project" with West China University of Medical Sciences and Materialize, using industrial SLA printer technology to provide surgical assistance for those injured in the earthquake , UnionTech officially entered the medical industry this year.
In the same year, it reached a cooperation intention with Times Angel and formally entered the orthodontics market. Orthodontics is the production of invisible transparent braces, which are more beautiful and comfortable than traditional steel wire braces. In the field of orthodontics, UnionTech has opened up the domestic orthodontic application market by virtue of its excellent technology and application solutions, and has successively been recognized by the well-known orthodontic brands Times Angel and Smartee Dental.
Orthodontics is one of the typical 3D printing dental applications. The production process of invisible braces is roughly divided into several major links: "impression-scanning-3D modeling-digital correction-3D printing dental model-thermoplastic molding of aligners-post-processing". In the whole process, 3D printing mainly undertakes the function of batch customization of tooth models in different stages of correction. After the tooth model is made, the transparent film is wrapped on the model by thermoplastic molding process, so as to make invisible braces suitable for the patient. "Through the analysis of the patient's oral data, the professionals of our medical department will combine the software to rearrange the teeth, such as moving each tooth by 0.2-0.3 mm each time, or twisting 15 degrees, etc., so as to obtain the data of the oral model at different stages of correction , and then use 3D printing technology to print them in batches at one time.” said Yao Junfeng, general manager of Smartee Dental.
Usually, a patient needs to replace about 20 sets of invisible braces, and the effect of correction can be achieved by continuously forming light force on the teeth. 20 sets of invisible braces means that 20 orthodontic models need to be printed. Making accurate orthotic models would not be possible without 3D printing technology and industrial SLA 3D printer. It can be said that invisible braces is an industry "born" by 3D printing. Yao Junfeng, general manager of Smartee Dental, believes that with the improvement of social living standards, the demand for orthodontics is growing rapidly. After several years of development, this trend has been verified in Smartee Dental. Up to now, Smartee Dental has hundreds of 3D printing equipment for orthodontic dental model production.
With the development of stomatology in China and the improvement of people's living standards, culture and consumption levels, people's requirements for medical technology and services are also getting higher and higher, so there is an increasing demand for high-end and high-quality dental medical devices and materials. The National Dental Survey shows that the prevalence of dental disease in China is over 97%, among adults, about 50% are periodontal disease patients, and the incidence rate of dental caries is 37%, with an average of 2.47 dental caries per person, based on a population of 1.4 billion , there are 500 million dental caries patients nationwide, and the total number of dental caries is more than 1 billion. The market prospect of China's dental products is very broad.
With the improvement of national living standards, we expect the invisible correction market to usher in explosive growth. "Judging from the business volume of two representative customers of UnionTech, Time Angel and Smartee Dental, their annual growth rate has been 30-50% in recent years, which is an exponential growth. With the development of the economy, the level of medical consumption has also increased accordingly, and invisible orthodontics will be more and more recognized and accepted by people. People's demand for beauty is eternal.
