Special Requirements for Additive Manufacturing of Dental Frameworks

Additive Manufacturing (AM) describes a number of technologies that generate three-dimensional objects directly from CAD data by joining volume elements. Dental technology is one sector in which the benefits of AM come into effect, as parts such as frameworks or implants are unique objects often with freeform shapes. These objects are difficult and expensive to produce with subtractive or formative technology. During the last decades, the application of digital technologies in the dental industry has increased. Therefore AM has also evolved to become a standard dental framework manufacturing process. While previously the dental laboratory did the complete manufacturing of dental frameworks, AM parts are usually produced by service providers, thus increasing the number of process participants. Under these circumstances, a reliable high quality production must be ensured. This requires a comprehensive Quality Management (QM) concept for the whole process chain. A first step in the evelopment of this QM concept is the definition of the product requirements, from which process specifications can be determined. These specifications build the basis for evaluating the process capability of the Additive Manufacturing process.