A dental laboratory based in Long Beach, California, was one of the first labs to adopt TrueDent, Stratasys' new resin for 3D printing of dentures and temporary crowns and bridges.
The lab, Posca Brothers, is run by owners Alex Posca, President, and AJ Posca, who serves as the Vice President and Director of Operations. Posca Brothers was founded by their grandfather, who moved to California from Argentina.
"After 65 years of servicing dental professionals, I am part of the third generation responsible for running this laboratory and ushering it into the digital and 3D printing age," AJ explained. "I firmly believe that our success has always been rooted in our commitment to providing our clients and their patients with the highest quality applications available."
The lab now has around 40 employees and focuses primarily on removable prosthetics, specifically dentures and partials. They operate four Stratasys printers, consisting of two J5 DentaJets and two Objet260s. On average, they receive approximately 80-100 digital cases per day, which accounts for about one-third of their total workflow.
“As one of the first labs to offer TrueDent, what motivated us was being able to finally offer a product firsthand to our customers and our patients before the rest of the market,” said AJ Posca, the Vice President and Director of Operations for Posca Brothers. “TrueDent enables us to expand our laboratory without being limited by our capacity internally.”
The TrueDent solution enables batch production of multicolor dental appliances on a single high-capacity tray. This multicolor printing capability has allowed the lab to produce more aesthetic, accurate parts.
"The most unique aspect of TrueDent, which sets it apart from other solutions available in the market, is its ability to simultaneously print multiple shade combinations," AJ explained.
"In the software, we can select specific shades for the base and the teeth of each dental appliance individually. This capability allows us to expand our business using a single printer instead of multiple machines. Additionally, each full-colored part, whether it's a denture or RPD, is printed monolithically, eliminating the need to bond individual teeth. The entire digital workflow leads to significant time and labor savings."
Implementing the TrueDent solution has provided Posca Brothers the opportunity to reach dentists who are interested in trying new digital solutions, including 3D printed dentures and removable partial dentures. Due to the higher precision, it has allowed doctors to decrease patient visits for relines by an average of 2 visits. The TrueDent solution has also introduced the capability of doing precise copy dentures, faster turnaround times and less overhead inventory.
“When we brought this technology into our lab, our customers were ecstatic because we had previously focused heavily on analogue solutions,” AJ said. “They couldn’t believe that this denture is 3D printed and not produced with traditional analog techniques, which we had used for the past 60 years.”
AJ and his team have received feedback from doctors stating that the look, feel, and fit of dentures and partials produced with TrueDent have been extremely accurate, AJ said.
"The feedback we have heard from dentists who have been using TrueDent has been great, and we are receiving more and more requests for it," AJ said. "Patients love it too because the fit is outstanding, and they feel reassured knowing that we have their design on file and can reprint their dentures whenever necessary."
AJ’s father, who ran the lab for decades before AJ and Alex took over, was as surprised by the new technology as the lab’s clients were. “During the first week of printing, my father looked at the printer and couldn’t believe that for 45 years, he was doing everything by hand,” AJ said. “TrueDent and the J5 DentaJet have really changed our business model. With this technology, we can now print for 12 hours a day, producing around 34 multi-colored dentures at once. This represents a 10X increase in production capacity and labor compared to standard workflows."
