Written by Todd Ealy, DDS
In the fall of 2022, after 20 years of practicing dentistry, I decided to get into the dental laboratory business. The logic to me seemed impeccable: Labs are in the business of making dentists happy, and who knows better how to make a dentist happy than a dentist? I still practice dentistry on a limited basis, but I spend most of my time running my lab and managing my 40 employees. I realize that not many dentists have chosen this path, but it’s a path that works for me.
My lab – which I’ve just renamed Ampersand Dental Solutions – is a full-service lab that’s been operating in the Atlanta metropolitan area with a focus on supporting cosmetic dentistry practices for over 30 years. We use 3D printing primarily for Nightguards, surgical guides, models, soft tissue, and whitening trays. When I purchased the lab it had five 3D printers that we would nest to run several jobs at night and I quickly determined they were not adequate for our needs.
I conducted a fair amount of due diligence before replacing the five printers, attending several trade shows to get presentations and demonstrations from various printer manufacturers. One of those manufacturers was DMG. I already had a high level of respect for their dental materials, but I hadn’t been aware that they were also in the 3D printer business. Needless to say, I was quite impressed by what I saw, and I decided to purchase their DentaMile Lab 5 Pro 3D printer.
The DentaMile Lab 5 Pro is a validated and automated professional printer for high-volume printing and is ideal for dental labs. We especially love its automatic separation of the finished printed devices (ASM) feature, or what we refer to as “auto-cutoff.” It allows us to line up six or even more jobs and run them overnight, with each job taking about an hour. We use DMG’s DentaMile software to handle the nesting; it too is a definite improvement over what we were using before. After each job is completed, the printer has a razor-like device that automatically and gently knocks the printed appliances into the basket below, cleans the build plate, and goes on to the next job.
With our previous system using five printers, we had to have someone remove the printed appliances from the build plate and then set up the next job. With the DentaMile Lab 5 Pro, when we arrive in the morning all six jobs have been completed. In essence, it’s an industrial-quality printer that does the work of six smaller printers. Simply said, it’s been a game-changer for our practice.
The DentaMile Lab 5 Pro is significantly less labor intensive than our old system of using five 3D printers, as one person out of our 40-person team can manage all of our 3D printing. If we were to go back to our old system – which is something we would never do – we would need to hire at least one more person.
Some of the other features of the DentaMile Lab 5 Pro include:
- A large build area for multiple device production
- A high-precision 4K light source
- RFID technology for automated material identification (which ensures that the right resin is being used for the appliance being printed)
- High print speeds due to patented Force Feedback technology
- An automatic resin reservoir refill
- Print chamber heating of up to 95° Fahrenheit/35° Celsius
- Compatibility with standard dental CAD software (STL files)
- Automatic hood opening via a foot sensor
- Intelligent connectivity with post-processing washing and curing units
- Software-supported, validated workflow
We also love the in-person service DMG provides. They came out to our office to set up the printer and train us on its use, and they will quickly return to our lab in the rare event that we have any issues.
Over the past several years, there’s been a steady increase in the number of dental practices that have replaced traditional analog impression techniques with digital scans, and I expect that trend to continue. I fully understand why dentists are moving in this direction, as there are significant time savings and cost benefits for both practices and patients.
In fact, the DentaMile Lab 5 Pro is a central part of our business strategy. We are a high-end lab with highly-skilled, highly paid employees who receive great benefits, and this has helped us retain our staff. However, because employee costs are the main component of our overhead, this also means that our profitability is less than many labs. The only way for us to increase profitability is to increase our efficiency by growing our business without adding any new employees, and the DentaMile Lab 5 Pro is the height of efficiency. It allows me to produce as many models a day with one employee doing the nesting digitally as I can with three employees pouring and mounting stone models. Right now 50 percent of our impressions are digital.
That percentage is growing steadily, and the DentaMile Lab 5 Pro will allow me to accommodate that growth without adding staff. As a former owner of a dental practice, I can tell you that most dentists won’t do business with a lab they don’t consider to be state-of-art. Having the Dental Mile Lab 5 Pro definitely reinforces the kind of cutting-edge image I want for my lab, and there’s no doubt in my mind that our revenues would be considerably less without it.
About the Author
Todd Ealy, DDS is a graduate of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Dentistry. In August of 2022, after 20 years in general practice with a focus on implant and restorative dentistry, he purchased Georgia Dental Laboratory, Inc. in the Atlanta metropolitan area. In January 2024, he renamed the business Ampersand Dental Solutions to better reflect the partnership that exists between his Dentists and the lab.