2024 was a groundbreaking year at Formlabs Dental. This year brought the release of our blazing fast masked stereolithography (MSLA) Form 4B Series 3D printers, the opening of our ecosystem, new materials, and much more. From new products that make your workflows faster and easier than ever, to celebrating our users’ unique stories, we’re closing out the year with just a few of our (and your) highlights from 2024.
In April, we announced our Form 4B masked stereolithography (MSLA) 3D printer. Delivering 4x the speed and 30% more build volume than Form 3B+, Form 4B redefines the industry standard for speed, accuracy, reliability, and material versatility, delivering 11 dental models in nine minutes.
“We have a printer that is super fast, it has great resin options for every single indication in dentistry, and it comes at an affordable cost.” - Dr. Ahmad Al-Hassiny, DMD, Institute of Digital Dentistry (IDD)
“We’re able to get two, high-throughput prints completed in a day, with only two post-processing periods as opposed to four. This frees me up to do other tasks that need to be done in my lab, so I have much more availability.” - Rich Heilweil, Rapid Prototyping Team Lead, Aurora DTC
New materials were added to the Dental Material Library, empowering users to print even more applications. These include:
In addition to these new resins, Formlabs is now open with the release of Open Material Mode, which unlocks the ability to use any 405 nm photopolymer resin on Form Series 3D printers, empowering expert users and researchers to print with any material on the market as well as custom resins. (Note that with Open Material Mode, users are responsible for validating their own biocompatibility.)
This year also brought Resin Pumping System, which can deliver 5 L of resin through a pumping system directly to the printer’s resin tank for improved efficiency. This means less frequent cartridge changes, and the ability to unlock bulk pricing on Formlabs SLA resins.
Fast, easy material changeovers on Form 4B Series printers empower the addition of applications. Explore the comprehensive dental material library to learn more or request a sample part to evaluate the quality for yourself.
Dr. Lisa Alvetro, DDS, is the sole orthodontist at Alvetro Orthodontics, supported by a staff of 22 employees and seeing 125 patients on an average day. Dr. Alvetro produces all appliances in-house, relying on Formlabs 3D printers and the versatile Formlabs Dental material library for the production of indirect bonding trays, occlusal guards, and models for thermoforming retainers and aligners.
The cutting-edge technology of Form 4B has had an immediate impact on Alvetro Orthodontics, enabling the elimination of appointments and a decrease of 6-8 weeks in treatment time for patients with braces.
Stephan Kreimer is a Master Dental Technician and director of Kreimer Dentallabor GmbH & Co. KG, a full-service dental lab specializing in digital workflows. More than 80% of their cases are received digitally and worked on by a team of 12 dental technicians in a space designed around the efficiency of digital workflows.
Kreimer's lab is hugely productive — the team 3D prints an average of 300 dental models each month, about 60% of which are highly precise restorative models, as well as biocompatible appliances.
Read the story to learn how Kreimer Dentallabor has eliminated patient appointments for the dentists they work with by printing with Precision Model Resin on Form 4BL.
“We can actually do same-visit printing, where we can go from a scan to a printed model and fabricate an appliance very easily within 10 minutes so we have it before a patient leaves.” - Dr. Christopher Baer, DMD, Baer Dental
“You can be the best digital dentist in the world, but when you put your gloves on you need to be fast and you need technology that is easy. You don't need tons of parameters, you need the perfect ones for each resin, each application. And you need to know that you can trust your technology. Today I can say that I trust 100 percent Formlabs 3D printers. It's not the same with other 3D printers.” - Dr. Antonino Cacioppo, DDS, PhD, Prosthodontist
Dr. Antonino Cacioppo is a digital dentistry expert who’s been 3D printing for almost a decade, and practicing digital dentistry since 2005. A dentist, private practitioner, and prosthodontist in Palermo, Italy, Dr. Cacioppo started out with a Form 2 3D printer, and currently uses 23 3D printers from different manufacturers. Read the story to learn how Dr. Cacioppo stays at the cutting edge of digital prosthodontics.
Formlabs Dental seeks to make dentistry easier for dentists, orthodontists, and labs. Whether you’re looking to start your 3D printing journey in 2025, or add materials, applications, and throughput to your 3D print lab, we’re here to support you in maximizing performance and versatility with easy workflows, intuitive technology, and extensive resources.