The 3D Printing Trade Awards are designed to focus on each established functions of additive manufacturing and the subsequent era of AM. Our profiles of this 12 months’s nominees for the 2024 3DPI Awards proceed with a have a look at FIDENTIS, chosen by our panel of specialists, and the pubic nomination course of for the shortlist within the 3D Printing Trade Awards Begin of the Yr.
FIDENTIS, led by CEO Max Horn, is utilizing 3D printing for dental prosthetics to deal with a crucial provide hole in high-quality dentures. With an getting older inhabitants and a retiring workforce of expert dental technicians, FIDENTIS goals to industrialize the manufacturing of precision dental prostheses utilizing superior additive manufacturing methods. A spin-off from the famend Fraunhofer IGCV, FIDENTIS combines over 20 years of additive manufacturing experience with insights from trade specialists, like co-founder Josef Schweiger, a number one dental technician. Their revolutionary options ship high-quality, reproducible, customizable elements that streamline dental lab workflows, scale back prices, and improve affected person satisfaction.
3DPI: What drawback are you fixing, and why is it essential?
Max Horn: Tooth loss is prevalent. The provision of high-quality dentures is proscribed as a result of they’re handmade by the very best dental technicians. With many dental technicians retiring and an getting older inhabitants, we face a provide hole of high-quality dentures. Industrial manufacturing is proscribed to low-quality options. Subsequently, you will need to allow the commercial manufacturing of high-quality dentures with the intention to meet the rising demand.
3DPI: Who’s your goal market?
Max Horn: Our clients are dental technicians and dental laboratories. Our manufactured-to-order merchandise are delivered to dental technicians to complete the prostheses. This reduces manufacturing time, will increase lab throughput, and eliminates unprofitable steps within the dental lab. Our clients obtain high-quality, reproducible, custom-made elements that save them money and time. Dentists profit from fewer affected person visits, and FIDENTIS’ high quality, time, and value advantages improve affected person satisfaction.
3DPI: Who’re the founders and core staff members, and what’s their expertise on this trade?
Max Horn: FIDENTIS is a spin-off from the Fraunhofer IGCV—the world’s main analysis institute for multi-material additive manufacturing of metals. As a scientist at Fraunhofer IGCV and doctoral pupil at TUM, I’ve been researching and shaping the know-how since 2017. Just a few years in the past, Josef Schweiger, one among Germany’s most famed dental technicians, found the manufacturing answer, primarily utilized in toolmaking and aerospace, and instantly acknowledged its potential for the dental trade. We joined forces and, along with our colleagues, additional developed the know-how to course of valuable metals and meet the excessive calls for positioned on dental prostheses. Collectively, our founding staff has over 20 years of additive manufacturing expertise and a powerful background in medical know-how. We convey the right combine to innovate dental manufacturing with our mentors and advisors from the dental trade. Our mission is to make use of scalable manufacturing applied sciences, collaborate successfully, and create an surroundings that fosters expertise to make sure sustainable entry to merchandise that make individuals smile.
3DPI: What technical challenges have you ever encountered to this point, and the way did you overcome them?
Max Horn: The regulatory framework within the EU has not but been a setback, however it’s not less than a serious problem. It goes with out saying that affected person welfare has high precedence and that individuals’s well being should not be jeopardized by new care options. On the identical time, the authorized framework and the way in which during which it’s carried out is extraordinarily restrictive to innovation and prices lots of power—not only for us as a start-up. So as to counteract the scarcity of specialists and rising prices within the healthcare sector as a society, we have to be extra agile in our method to innovation.
3DPI: Who do you take into account to be the competitors on this market? How does your proposition meet underserved wants or outperform?
Max Horn: We don’t compete with dental technicians, however moderately create synergies with them by enhancing their effectivity and permitting them to concentrate on their core actions. Industrial manufacturing is in the intervening time restricted to options with out friction telescopes, that are crucial for a safe match within the affected person’s mouth. Our options allow dental laboratories to scale their manufacturing of high-quality options with friction telescopes.
3DPI: What milestones have you ever achieved, and what are your subsequent main targets?
Max Horn: In Could 2024 we’ve got secured EXIST Switch of Analysis Funding of €1.6M, which permits us to additional develop our know-how accordingly to the wants of sufferers and dental technicians. We additionally gained the 3D Pioneers Problem within the MedTech class. The optimistic response from trade specialists exhibits us that we’re heading in the right direction and motivates us to maintain up the tempo and drive our imaginative and prescient ahead intensively. Our subsequent main aim is to make our first sufferers smile once more.
3DPI: Is there anything you want to add?
Thanks to everybody who supported us on our means. With out the super help of specialists, mentors, colleagues, and funding our bodies this may not have been attainable.
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