The digital laboratory of the future is automated

Formlabs

Tue. 6. August 2024

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In 2017, master dental technician Stephan Kreimer joined the family business as the managing director of Kreimer Dentallabor, a state-of-the-art dental laboratory based in Warendorf in Germany, about an hour north-east of Dortmund. Since his entry into the family business, Kreimer has focused on advancing digital dentistry and leveraging 3D printing to increase the laboratory’s productivity and streamline its workflow, to great success. Adaptability and technological advances have always been top of mind for Kreimer. Since joining the laboratory, the Formlabs dental 3D printers have been an essential part of propelling the laboratory ahead of its competitors, which, for the most part, still rely heavily on analogue workflows.

Kreimer’s team mainly works on digital cases, where 3D-printed models of intra-oral scans are essential. Kreimer and his team utilise the Form 3B+ stereolithography (SLA) printer to print models. Compared with a traditional process, this streamlined digital workflow saves time and personnel and production costs while preserving the highest precision, accuracy and reliability.

“There is a growing need for automation in this process to enhance productivity and minimise the hands-on time required from our employees.”

The quality of digitally produced appliances made such an impression on Kreimer’s network of dental practices that orders started increasing, and the laboratory began to struggle to keep up with the demand. Despite the added efficiency of digital workflows, the laboratory was still affected by the shortage of skilled workers in Germany and found it difficult to meet the increased demand from dental practices for digital cases. Since increasing staff was not possible, Kreimer realised he would have to improve the productivity of the processes instead. As 3D printers are central to the laboratory’s production, and staff time needed to be preserved, Kreimer realised that the greatest potential for further improvements lay in the reduction of manual interactions with the printers.

The necessity of entering the 3D-printing room to remove finished parts manually was taking valuable working time away from his team, time that could be better spent on high-value tasks. Automating simple steps like part removal from the printers could have outsized impacts on team productivity and increase the number of cases the team could handle each week. “There is a growing need for automation in this process to enhance productivity and minimise the hands-on time required from our employees,” said Kreimer.

The solution for the Kreimer laboratory was the Formlabs Automation Ecosystem. By integrating the ecosystem into the laboratory’s workflow, Kreimer has tripled the team’s dental model production and expanded the number of dental indications it is possible for the laboratory to print. The Automation Ecosystem includes Form Auto, Resin Pumping System and Fleet Control. Form Auto is a hardware extension for Form 3+ and Form 3B+ SLA printers that automatically removes finished parts from Build Platform 2 and starts the next print without the need for operator interaction.

Form Auto is conceptualised as a seamless add-on for Formlabs’ stereolithography printers.

Meanwhile, Resin Pumping System delivers resin from a 5 l container to the printer without cartridge changeover, improving operational efficiency, streamlining the 3D-printing workflow and reducing waste by 86%. These hardware components are augmented by Fleet Control, advanced printer management software that enables automatic print-to-printer assignment, streamlined queueing and optimised workflow management.

“Fleet Control is truly impressive, as it eliminates the need for manual printer selection and starts prints automatically. Consequently, we have substantially minimised our interactions with the printers and eliminated the need to deliberate over printer assignments for each job,” Kreimer said. Integrating the Automation Ecosystem into the laboratory’s existing workflow went smoothly—Form Auto and Fleet Control are designed as plug-and-play solutions for printer fleets of any size. On the hardware side, Form Auto is easily installed as an add-on to any Form 3B+ SLA printer that employs the Quick Release Technology of Build Platform 2.

Whenever changes regarding working procedures and environment are introduced, it is necessary for the whole team to be on board with these changes. Thanks to the seamless integration of the Formlabs Automation Ecosystem into a laboratory that was already using Formlabs solutions, adoption of the Automation Ecosystem was effortless. Kreimer said, “Since Form Auto and Fleet Control are more or less self-explanatory, the transition process was absolutely smooth.”

To improve oversight and further streamline production, Kreimer added a tablet that tracked all the print jobs through Dashboard, making it easy for every laboratory member to quickly check in on the printers’ progress. Thanks to Fleet Control, additional features were activated within Dashboard and PreForm, Formlabs’ printing preparation software. These software tools direct automation and optimise workflow for advanced fleet management. Thanks to this automatic distribution, handling the multi-printer fleet has never been easier, and Kreimer has reduced manual work related to printing as well as the downtime of the printers.

Setting up Form Auto with the Form 3B+ 3D printer was very easy for Stephan Kreimer.

The laboratory’s Form Auto is currently used to automate the printing of dental models, which constitute the bulk of the laboratory’s print jobs. These models are printed on a single Form 3B+ printer. However, with Fleet Control, the Automation Ecosystem benefits the whole printing fleet and the entire portfolio of tasks at the laboratory. “Despite having only one Form Auto, we also use Fleet Control for all other printers, as this equates to software-side automation for indications with lower volumes,” Kreimer said. Form Auto detaches printed parts from Build Platform 2 thanks to its Quick Release Technology and then immediately prepares the printer for the next print job.

For the Kreimer laboratory, this led to a drastic reduction in hands-on labour time. Before adding Form Auto, laboratory employees had to stop what they were doing every time a print finished. Now, the printing process is fully automated, and prints are collected in large batches, enabling consolidation of post-processing tasks into one block of working time.

“Since we started working with Form Auto, we have been able to seamlessly send our print jobs to Fleet Control throughout the day, eliminating the need to enter the 3D-printing room at all. All models are printed automatically, enabling us to empty the container just once a day and process all the models in a single batch,” Kreimer explained.

Form Auto has helped the Kreimer laboratory increase production without adding staff and has even created more time for higher-value tasks. Before Form Auto, if no one was working, production stopped. Kreimer said: “We can now maximise productivity by utilising the full 48 hours of Saturday and Sunday, enabling us to initiate dozens of print jobs during the weekend or conveniently from the home office.” By adding Form Auto, the laboratory produces models around the clock, seven days a week, ensuring that production does not stop when the team leaves for the day or the weekend.

“What I love the most about the Automation Ecosystem is the simplicity of Form Auto combined with Fleet Control, resulting in a remarkable boost in efficiency.”

By integrating the Automation Ecosystem, Kreimer has been able to tackle the challenge of handling increasing demand without hiring more employees. The team is now printing non-stop with drastically reduced manual interactions, so they have more time to spend on other tasks. Thanks to this rise in productivity, the dental laboratory has tripled its output of dental models and is handling more customer jobs annually, ultimately leading to higher profits.

“What I love the most about the Automation Ecosystem is the simplicity of Form Auto combined with Fleet Control, resulting in a remarkable boost in efficiency thanks to the automated printing process. Thanks to this automation, our employees have been able to free up valuable time, enabling them to focus on handling an increased number of incoming jobs from our customers. With the same user interaction, we can now triple our weekly dental model production,” enthused Kreimer.

Adopting innovations like 3D printing, intra-oral scanning and the recent Formlabs Automation Ecosystem has given the Kreimer laboratory a significant competitive advantage. Owing to the efficiency of Form Auto, he is planning on acquiring extra units to automate existing printers for additional indications. “If a specific indication exceeds the capacity of a single printer during the week, the addition of another Form Auto will be implemented to automate this indication as well,” Kreimer said.

Moreover, the already-automated model production has been optimised even further by leveraging the advantages of the new Resin Pumping System as well as post-processing in large batches with Form Wash L and Form Cure L. “The utilisation of Form Wash L and Form Cure L has proved to be remarkable in enabling the simultaneous post-processing of multiple models,” said Kreimer.

As Kreimer and the team at Kreimer Dentallabor have shown, the addition of the Formlabs Automation Ecosystem and the post-processing capacity of Form Wash L and Form Cure L enable the scaling of production. By automating 3D-printing systems, it is possible to further streamline workflows, increasing the efficiency of laboratories and freeing up staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

Editorial note:

This article was published in 3D printing international magazine of dental printing technology Vol. 4, Issue 1/2024.