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Your must-have guide to dental 3D printing

There’s no doubt about it – dental 3D printing is here to stay. Whether you’re a seasoned printing pro, or an absolute beginner, this e-book will be your invaluable guide.

It contains practical, helpful tips and advice that you can action straight away, no matter where you are on your dental 3D printing journey.

SprintRay eBook – Additive Manufacturing in Dentistry – Volume 1

We’re popping the corks at Eurodontic this summer as two key members of the Eurodontic team celebrate their 10-year work anniversary!

You might already be familiar with Leonora Ward. Our girl on the road is very much the public face of Eurodontic and can usually be found offering product demos to dental teams, updating our online shop, chatting to customers on the phone or answering questions on social media. She’s even been known to experiment with the products she’s responsible for promoting.

When asked about her forthcoming work anniversary, Leonora commented:

‘Wow… I can’t believe it’s been 10 years! If you have ever met me, you will know I’m still as enthusiastic about our products and supporting our customers, as I was the day I started. It’s exciting being part of a forward-thinking team, who are always happy to explore new ideas.’

If Leonora is the friendly face of Eurodontic, then Angela is the organisational tour de force, keeping everything running like clockwork.

Angela is responsible for liaising with our suppliers, ordering stock, processing orders, updating pricing, packaging up products and dealing with both pre and post sales enquiries.

She commented:

‘I feel very privileged to have worked for Eurodontic these past ten years, and the time has gone so quickly I find it hard to believe I have reached this milestone!

Lots of changes have taken place over the years but providing good customer service has always been my main goal. Helping and supporting my customers is what makes me happy. I have always felt well looked after and valued here, and I’m sure the next ten years will be as good to me as the last ten.’

Together, Leonora and Angela are the dream team that keep Eurodontic growing, and they make sure that only the very best orthodontic products end up in your capable hands.

We’d like to congratulate them both on their 10-year milestone and also say a huge thank you for all their hard work and dedication! Here’s to another 10 years of our Eurodontic dream team!

Provides efficient and flexible biomechanics. This appliance significantly enhances treatment capabilities and can be extremely effective in reducing treatment time, surgeries, and extractions. Appliances can be inserted chairside and loaded immediately.

https://eurodontic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/dualtop_webinar_2021.pdf

https://eurodontic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Dual-Top-4-Panel-Brochure.pdf

Hands-On Courses with Patients

These courses are aimed at giving a personalised explanation to orthodontists and orthodontic labs, who want to expand their knowledge with anchoring treatment.

Each course involves 10 hours of participation, with the combination of theoretical and practical workshops.

Dr. Heinz Winsauer Orthodontic Office – Bregenz, Austria

Tiger Dental 2021 https://youtu.be/s42C5UDJN2o

https://eurodontic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Tiger-Dental-course.pdf

Over the lockdown period, lots more of our lovely Eurodontic customers started ordering their lab products online. We noticed the shift in buying habits and realised it was high time we gave our online shop a bit of much-needed TLC.

We’ve been working hard on it for a couple of months now, and we’re now delighted to launch our new and improved online shop!

We’ve added 100s more of your favourite, must-have products and added user-friendly new categories to make it super easy to find the products you want.

We’ll be adding even more products to the shop over the coming weeks and months.

Take a look – we’d love to hear what you think!

Don’t have an account? Just visit the shop, add your chosen products to your basket and checkout. Our customer service team will then be in touch to set up your account and finish processing your order.

Most of our regular customers, especially across the South, will know me as the ‘Eurodontic lady’ and I can usually be found either on the road or chatting to practices about our fabulous products!

So you can imagine my frustration as recent events have prevented me from doing what I do best. Like so many of us, the lockdown has meant that I’ve had to rethink how I do my job, for the time being at least.

I’m still in touch with my lovely customers, via Zoom and on the phone, but I’ve still found myself with some downtime.

Learning Something New

One of Eurodontic’s key products for 2020 is the Ultimaker S3, an amazing, compact desktop 3D printer. I decided to bring one home to trial. What better use of my downtime than learning something new?

My son was so excited when the printer arrived. Eager to start printing something (anything!), we unboxed it together and set it up within minutes. We pressed the button on our first test print – nothing happened! We’d failed at the first hurdle. So we sheepishly went back to the beginning, and this time we actually read the instructions!

It worked – once we followed the step-by-step setup guide, we were ready to print.

Easy To Use

I downloaded the Cura software and headed over to the My Mini Factory website which has a huge range of free files to print.

Lego Heads was the first thing we downloaded to my desktop. Then it was as easy as opening the Cura software and adding the new Lego file.

The software is really easy to use. I was able to move the image to the perfect position, so it was flat on the glass plate, and after just 30 minutes we’d made our very own Darth Vader head! All I needed to do was remove the support material, which peeled off easily. No mess, no fuss and no need for post-processing!

Caught The Bug

By then I’d definitely caught the 3D printing bug and decided to move the Ultimaker to a more permanent home in my office. I went to do a print – uh-oh, a printer head error. Oh no, here we are in lockdown and I’ve broken it already!

I called the Ultimaker helpline who were brilliant. I had knocked the printer head out of alignment and it was an easy fix. I just had to manually realign the printer head which took a couple of minutes and I was back printing – that week I think we managed several horseshoe models, an iPhone holder, 3D puzzles and a Batman plane!

Online demo

I’m not hugely confident when it comes to new technology, but I have to say the Ultimaker S3 and the Cura Software are so easy to use and they’re suitable for anyone who is new to 3D printing.

If you’d like to have a chat about the Ultimaker S3, give me a buzz or get in touch by email. I’d be happy to give you an online demo – Darth Vader head anyone?

The last couple of months have been difficult for everyone. We sincerely hope that our customers, suppliers and colleagues are all safe and well.

Having undergone a short period of closure, followed by a phased opening on a skeleton staff, we are delighted to say that Eurodontic is now fully operational again.

We’ve carried out a full risk assessment and taken all necessary measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our staff and customers. We’re confident that we can now resume ‘business as usual’.

However, please be aware that due to our increased safety measures, there may be a short delay in getting your order to you. We will do our best to minimise this where possible.

If you have any questions or queries, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We’re looking forward to working with our lovely customers once again.

Andrea Johnson is Chair and a founding member of the charity Den-Tech, Orthodontic and maxillofacial laboratory manager at Montagu hospital, Mexborough and the current Chair of the Orthodontic Technicians Association (OTA).

We’re proud to be sponsoring her session at this year’s Dental Technology Conference, which takes place in Edinburgh on 27-28 September.

The session, titled ‘Under Pressure – Thermoforming Tips, Tricks and Advice’ will introduce a range of thermoforming techniques using SCHEU equipment and materials, which will be invaluable both for beginners and more experienced technicians alike.

In April 2019, Eurodontic had the privilege of arranging for Andrea to visit SCHEU’s HQ in Iserlohn, Germany.

Here’s what Andrea made of the visit…

‘SCHEU-DENTAL was founded in In 1926 and is still a family-run business. They develop very high quality dental products and services, including a large range of pressure-moulded appliances, sleep medicine and now 3D printing.

It was with this in mind that I embarked on this journey. I have a very well-loved, old and battered Biostar pressure moulding machine in my lab and quite frankly was looking forward to seeing first hand from the experts how this can be used to its maximum potential with the materials developed especially with it in mind.

I arrived in Iserlohn the evening before my scheduled day at SCHEU and was able to have a little wander around the town. It is a very lovely place and full of the character I have come to expect from the German towns I have visited. It has a very ‘olde world’ feel to it with cobbled streets and characteristic buildings cleverly mixed in with the new without spoiling the overall feel.

The following day was a real learning exercise. I was collected from my hotel in the morning by Martin Göllner who is SCHEU’s sales director. We drove the 10 minutes to the company where I was introduced to Martin’s colleague Antji who was my instructor for the day. I was very impressed by Martin and Antji’s English, it was certainly a huge amount better than my German and the hospitality of them both throughout the day was incredibly impressive.

I spent the day with Antji who is an excellent technician and a complete expert on all of Scheu’s products. We covered topics such as the pros and cons of pressure forming versus vacuum, model prep using BLUE-BLOKKER®/SIL-KITT/BIOPLAST® insulating, different retainer blanks and applications, DURASOFT® pd, bleaching trays and mouthguards. It was a very intense day but it was great to see how the company intends and recommends its products to be used to gain the maximum potential from them.

I have to say that I have definitely changed, and I believe, improved the techniques that I was already using and feel that the end products that I now produce are better and more durable than before.

If anyone gets the opportunity to visit this facility and attend one or more of their courses I would highly recommend it. In the meantime I hope to be able to use the skills and techniques I have learnt to show others too how they can achieve the best possible results from these materials.

Huge thanks to both Scheu and Eurodontic for your support and the opportunity.’

Don’t forget to book your place at the DPC Conference, to take part in Andrea’s workshop and of course visit the Eurodontic stand!

We’re looking forward to descending on the fabulous city of Edinburgh for this year’s Dental Professionals Conference on 27-28 September.

Hosted by the Orthodontic Technicians Association (OTA) the event features a real mix of sessions covering topics including pressure-forming, digital workflow and infection control as well as an all-important briefing on forthcoming legal changes.

We’re thrilled to be sponsoring one of the key sessions, led by Andrea Johnson, Chair and a founding member of the charity Den-Tech, Orthodontic and maxillofacial laboratory manager at Montagu hospital, Mexborough and the current Chair of the Orthodontic Technicians Association (OTA).

Andrea’s workshop, ‘Under pressure – Thermoforming tips, tricks and advice’ takes place at 10am and 11.15am on Friday 27^th September.

During the session Andrea will demonstrate some common thermoforming techniques both to inform and educate those new to thermoforming, as well as offering tips, advice and possible alternative techniques to those with more experience.

She will be using a SCHEU Ministar Pressure Thermoforming Unit and range of SCHEU products to demonstrate these techniques.

We’re very much looking forward to exhibiting at this event. We’ve been supporting the OTA for many years and it’s great to see such a packed line up. Do come and say hello to us on the stand – this promises to be a great show!

Visit https://ota-uk.org/dcp-conference-2019/ for more information.

With spring in the air we’re looking ahead to this year’s Dental Technology Show, which is taking place at Birmingham NEC on 17th May.

One of our highlights will be listening to 3D printing expert, Vanik Kaufmann- Jinoian, who’ll be speaking in the Digital and Innovation Theatre from 1.45pm – 2.30pm.

Afterwards, he’ll be joining us on the Eurodontic stand to answer any further questions. We’ll be showcasing one of the 3D printers he uses – the ASIGA Max.

More about the speaker

Vanik Kaufmann-Jinoian was born in 1958 in Calcutta, India. He grew up in Switzerland in a city close to Basel, where he went to school and qualified as a dental technician.

In the following years he optimised his skills in various dental laboratories in Switzerland, mainly in the fields of ceramics and implantology.

He worked for a period of time for VITA-Zahnfabrik in Bad Saeckingen, Germany as an international trainer. At that time he was the youngest international ceramic demonstrator in the world. He opened his own dental laboratory in 1990 in Liestal, Switzerland, which now has 15 employees and covers all fields of modern dentistry.

Learning by doing

Vanik had a fascination for 3D printing a long time before this technology became popular in the dental field. He was enthralled by the complexity of the technology and its potential to automate processes, optimise precision and ensure reproducibility.

Having identified a lack of suitable 3D printing systems, Vanik Kaufmann decided to build – or let’s say to put together –his own 3D printer. This phase can be best characterised as ’learning by doing’ and took up a great deal of time and money. The number of misprints far surpassed the number of acceptable results – and even these were of dubious quality.

Deep understanding

As soon as the first low-cost 3D printers appeared in the dental sector, he was eager to buy any promising device and developed his own, personal testing system. He started printing huge piles of printed objects, with the machines running virtually around the clock.

Vanik trialled resins and developed processes and applications that had never before been tried, tested or released. More than once, he came up with new perspectives and approaches for product developments.

Throughout the years, Vanik has developed a deep understanding of 3D printing technology and its potential applications. He lectures at major symposiums and is involved with the master technicians school in Switzerland.

In 3D printing technology, Vanik Kaufmann is undoubtedly a true specialist. We’re looking forward to hearing from him.

For more information on the Dental Technology Showcase, visit https://www.the-dts.co.uk/

At Eurodontic, we’re gearing up for the next Dental Technology Showcase – the UK’s biggest free conference and exhibition for labs and Dental Technicians.

Taking place on 12-13 May at the NEC in Birmingham, this year’s show promises to be every bit as good as previous events, with a world-class speaker line-up, conference programme and a wealth of exhibitors showcasing the latest tools, techniques and products.

Attendees to this free-to-attend, two-day CPD training and education conference and exhibition will be brought up to speed on the latest techniques, treatments, studies and will be able to tailor individual training paths from a comprehensive speaker line-up, hands-on training and live demonstrations.

You’ll also be able to obtain 40 hours of verified CPD during the course of the event, meaning you can secure most of your annual CPD requirements in one go!

You’ll find Eurodontic at Stand H01 – don’t forget to stop by and say hello!