Just after I completed the blog for yesterday, which I thought was rubbish, but in the end, I got some love and attention I didn't expect, I went to the Straumann stand at the IDS Congress.
I was on my way there when I forgot that I hadn't done a blog, so I had to nip sideways and do one before I could get there.
When I got there, I was encountered by one of these extraordinary stands, which probably cost about $2 million to put together and staff. I met my old friend Steve Booth, who is now the managing director for Northern Europe but was one of the early Straumann reps in the late 90s when I started implant dentistry, and we've grown up together ever since.
Steve and I were due to meet each other as he wanted to take me through some of the new products that Straumann are launching in a world where the digital environment is changing almost by the day, but IDS is always the place where these companies launch their big deals.
I had walked around IDS for 2 days, and every single stand had a 3D printer. I've been in the world of 3D printing for a long time in our practice, and I was convincing everybody that I was with, and everybody that would listen, that 3D printing was 'not there yet', not ready for practice, too messy, too clunky, not cost-effective, something which just needed to be carried out in the lab.
Then I went on to the Straumann stand and met Steve, and then I met Wallace (I know Wallace well from Straumann), and Steve asked me, "What would it take to change your mind about printing?".
I told Steve (and he knows I'm a super cynic) that if he could give me a printer that could print aligners for a patient right now while they were in the chair, then it would probably change my mind about printing, and so he said, "watch this" and handed me over to Wallace.
What I did was I logged in with my Straumann credentials onto a web-based system (not computer or legacy-based, but just on the web, so like a website, yeah?).
On the web-based system, it had the whole Straumann universe, my coDiagnostiX stuff, my implant registry if I want to use it, my e-shop to buy things, all of it in the one place looking the same, beautiful, connected and together, not a dongle in sight to give me access, no switching tacks to go to different pages or different programmes.
I selected the patient test that I was going to use, and I picked up the new Straumann iOS scanner that's been released. I scanned an upper and lower model and scanned them in the biting position in about 35 seconds.
The model was prepared for a crown in the lower right first molar and, so I then clicked on the software and asked the AI designer to create me a crown for that lower right 6, which it did in about 2 seconds (literally).
Looks pretty good the crown, so I accepted it and sent it to the new Midas 3D printer that Straumann have linked with.
This printer is a cartridge-based printer, so for £20, you can have a cartridge that just inserts into the top of the printer, has no mess, and prints your crown in 6 minutes.
6 minutes.
Take the crown out of the printer, snip it off, wash it, and put it in the curing machine for 3 minutes.
3 minutes.
The whole process (and I wasn't very quick) took 12 minutes.
I timed it.
The crown is 51% ceramic and 49% resin.
That's a game changer - entirely.
You might want to read this blog post again because I promise you that this changes the game.
I went on to that stand with absolutely no doubt that printing was not ready, and I came off the stand understanding that even I needed to hurry up because it was definitely ready.
I have been in this world for a long time, printing and milling, experimenting, investing, and it's been a long time since my breath was taken away quite as much as it was yesterday afternoon.
CEREC, we're presenting lots of stuff at IDS. It's a very CEREC type of place is IDS.
One of the guys I was with Very cleverly told me, I see CEREC are celebrating CEREC 40 years, I said, yeah, he said, "They won't be celebrating 50 years".
Blog Post Number - 4124
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