By Stan Goff, Senior Managing Editor
Over 600,000 dental patients have been treated using the SprintRay 3D printing ecosystem, and Meena Barsoum, DMD, the company’s global head of clinical strategy, demonstrated just how capable the Midas 3D printer is when Dentistry Today stopped by the booth this week at the Javits Center.
“Midas is the first of its kind. It’s a digital press 3D printer, so what it allows us to do here at SprintRay is develop resins that are highly filled with ceramic, which gives us much stronger, more durable materials than a traditional 3D printing workflow,” the Arlington Heights, Illinois dentist said on Monday.
SprintRay is driving some of the most exciting advancements in 3D printing, and visitors to their booth at the Greater New York Dental Meeting had the opportunity to see some of these up close.
With a wide range of clinical applications, Dr. Barsoum explained real-world practice benefits brought about by this technology, and explained how Midas is reshaping same-day dentistry.
Featuring Digital Press Stereolithography (DPS) technology, Midas allows up to 3 definitive crowns in 10 minutes, regardless of filler content. Clinicians can design, print, and post cure a definitive crown in less than 30 minutes. Additionally, crowns can be 3D printed in less than 20 minutes under certain workflows.
Its compact design eliminates the need for messy resin vats or complicated setups, making it an effortless addition to practices. SprintRay’s AI Studio software complements Midas, offering seamless, AI-powered restorative designs with just a click.
“This has been a huge innovation,” Dr. Barsoum added. “As a company where we really invest in R&D, we’re putting a lot of energy into developing the next generations of these highly filled resins and eventually replacing traditional ceramics benefits with printing additive versus a milling process.
“And I come from a milling background. I’ve done that for years. Certainly, there’s advantages to milling. But you know, when you look at the ability to press something and print it in an additive way, without the over milling, the challenges you have with fit and bur sizes and insertion angles and all those things. This just takes all the thinking out of it.”
The SprintRay Pro 2 is redesigned to be the most accurate 3D printer on the market. From refactored resin profiles to the patent-pending Optical Panel, it is designed to improve clinical outcomes across the 15+ indications SprintRay devices serve. With Pro 2, nothing has been left to chance.
But the Midas 3D printer is immune to resin viscosity, making it ideal for the future of biomaterial innovation for highly filled composites.
Dr. Barsoum explained the benefits of the Midas system and demonstrated how the 3D printer works.
“The Pro 2, for example, requires a resin that has some fluidity so it can flow in the tank and actually print. And when we start adding more ceramic content to the resins, they become really viscous,” he said. “So, it’s almost like peanut butter, so it doesn’t flow well on this. That’s why the Midas takes a press, and the machine actually prints. It has multiple components. The glass panel is where the light engine shines and cures the resin. Basically, this piston uses hydrogen, dynamic pressure, and it’ll press down and move the resin across the glass.”
He then demonstrated the printer’s build platform, which allows clinicians to press a more viscous resin—a high translucency resin indicated for more aesthetic indications like veneers, inlays, onlays, and partial coverage indications.
“So based on this capsule, I can put 1 to 2, maybe 3 restorations on and on the Midas, I can print 3 of these at once,” he explained. “So now, not only can I load 1 capsule, but I can also load 3 of them and print 3 different materials for indications, all at the same time, and it takes the same amount of time. And the curing process is all handled in the NanoCure [post curing machine]. So, this takes heat and light energy, and in about 4 minutes it will fully polymerize the restoration, and you can deliver it safely to the patient. That’s the win here.”
After showing off some printed veneers, Dr. Barsoum noted that SprintRay also offers a temporary material that you can print to make really precise single-visit provisionals. These temporaries can now be delivered for an extended period of time for a patient trial, but they can also be converted into a final material in the same design; so once it’s all designed, “you’re ready to do whatever you need to do”.
Also on display at the booth were SprintRay’s Apex Flex flexible partial dentures, a variety of 3D printing resins, the Duo Kit designed to allow users to print 2 materials in a single job, and the SprintRay Cloud Design workflow.
The Duo Kit brings a new modality to the Pro 2 printer, from complete dentures to restorations with fit-check models.
“It’s such a nice value add. This will print both resins at the same time, and it’s not just for dentures. So now we can start scaling this into different workflows, like surgical guides and models, for example. Or I could make a night guard and a sports guard at the same time, a night guard and a retainer at the same time, because with the Duo Kit, I could put any of the resins in. Once you have a design, you have a world of opportunity,” he said. “We’re really excited at how much we can develop. And the advantage for us is we make our own resins, so we can develop much faster than trying to validate somebody else’s resin on our hardware.”
With a personal internet hotspot on the trade show floor, Dr. Barsoum was able to demonstrate the company’s Studio software, using AI CAD design software to start a treatment and quickly design a case with multiple units at once. Enhancements coming soon will allow retainers, implant crowns and guides to be included in the ecosystem.
“It’s just changed how we operate as dentists today,” he said. “And another big focus we have at the company is our own in-house AI engineers building from scratch something that rivals companies that have been around for 40 years doing something similar. This AI software is a testament to how much ingenuity goes into our R&D side of the company.”
