Materials, not printers, decide whether a 3D-printed crown works. That is the argument Hossein Bassir kept coming back to, and after a decade building SprintRay, he has earned the right to make it.
I sat down with Hossein, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at SprintRay, to talk about where dental 3D printing actually sits in 2026. This continues our run of conversations with the companies building this space, and SprintRay is hard to skip.
I went in as a full-time clinician who has been slow to trust printed restoratives. I came out having changed my mind on a few things, and dug in harder on others.
Listen to the episode below or continue reading to find out more.
TLDR - The Episode in 30 Seconds
- Hossein Bassir, SprintRay co-founder, argues that materials decide the outcome in dental 3D printing, and that hardware and software exist to serve the material.
- SprintRay started building its own resins after a supplier cut them off, which shaped Midas, Crown HT, and the highly filled Restore resin still awaiting FDA clearance.
- Printed composites are not trying to beat zirconia. The pitch is wear closer to natural enamel, at a price point that widens access.
- Post-processing, especially washing restoratives, is still the biggest friction, and IPA exposure quietly degrades mechanical properties.
- Only a small share of practices print today. Hossein and I both think CAD confidence, helped by AI, is the real unlock.
- The one that surprised me, after close to a hundred printed restorations, my one- and two-year recalls look better than I expected.
A Decade of Dental 3D Printing
Hossein is not a dentist. He came out of industrial design building power tools, and admits the first surgical guide photos he saw were too gory to look at. That outsider engineering lens runs through everything SprintRay does.
The company did not start in dentistry either. As Hossein put it, "We started as more of a generic 3D printing solution. But as soon as we realized how dentists need this mass customization tool ... we pivoted the entire business to be in dentistry."
Eleven years on, from a 2015 Kickstarter to 2026, they have gone from begging people to look at a printer to being one of the loudest names in the category. He is honest that it is still niche, his read, not mine.
Why Materials Decide the Outcome
For Hossein, the printer is not the point. "The quality of the outcome, it's all defined by the material," he told me, and the software is "the glue between the materials and the hardware."
That belief was forced on them. Early on, they leaned on a third party for resins, and when that supplier stopped selling to them, the lesson stuck. "We need to rely on ourselves," Hossein said. "We can't count on anybody else."
So they built a materials team and their own resins. It is also why Midas exists. Highly filled resins are too thick to print the normal way. His line stuck with me. If you hold the cup upside down, "that resin doesn't move."
They also moved their software to the cloud so printers stay current, and they run a human design service, because Hossein is upfront that AI cannot design everything yet.
I have said before that this is SprintRay's real moat. Plenty of printers print accurately now. The materials and the workflow are what people actually come for. The highly filled Restore resin he keeps teasing, around 70 percent filler by his account, is still going through FDA. I want to see it.
Printed Crowns and the Zirconia Question
Some people call the Midas press story smoke and mirrors, and there is a real question about how far you can push a resin before physics stops you. I put both to Hossein.
Hossein's answer reframed it. He is not trying to beat zirconia. As he described it, "our own enamel, and the tooth structure itself, the organic matter, it also wears down." The pitch is a material that wears more like a natural tooth, not one that outlives everything around it.
I am a zirconia guy by habit. But I have now done close to a hundred printed resin restorations, and my one- and two-year recalls look better than I expected. One I had to double-check on the X-ray to be sure it was not ceramic.
The honest caveat is time. We still need the long-term data, and that is the whole ball game for printed restoratives.
One More Tool in the Toolbox
Hossein does not sell printing as a replacement for anything. "What we are really bringing to the table is a very, very good mature solution to add to your toolbox," he said. Nobody has to throw out their mill.
That framing is really about access. A milling machine at 50 grand is out of reach across much of the world, and printing lowers that bar. It also opens new business models. He described clinicians offering All-on-X on a subscription, a fresh arch every few years with a cleaning, rather than one expensive one-and-done.
I keep calling SprintRay the CEREC of 3D printing, and I mean it as a compliment. CEREC won chairside on workflow, not on the mill. I spent over a million dollars on CEREC systems in my own practice because it was foolproof. Printing is becoming that same kind of in-house workhorse.
The Friction Nobody Has Solved Yet
The part that still frustrates me is post-processing. The Nano Cure is good and properly chairside. The wash is not. It is, in my words, still in the cowboy era.
Hossein did not dodge it. He explained that IPA, "without you seeing it, really corrodes a lot of mechanical properties from the dental device," which is why exposure has to be kept short and why restorative washing needs a better answer. He says solutions are coming, especially for Restore.
We also got into open versus closed. SprintRay's case is that a validated workflow means the company, not the clinician, carries the liability for the outcome, because they have done the regulatory testing on their own printers, washers and cure units. That is a fair point, and a commercial one too.
Then there is the elephant in the room: most practices still do not print. Hossein reckons it is 10 to 15 percent of the market. We both landed on the same culprit: CAD. If you cannot CAD, you cannot mill or print anything, and AI is the most likely thing to fix that.
What Is Next for SprintRay
Hossein's honest read is that the market feels a little jaded after the Midas hype, and that this year has been quiet on headliner releases. He expects the next wave to come from materials, better post-processing hardware, smaller machines that give counter space back, and new validation partners like GC, which he is clearly excited about.
The line that sums him up: "There is a reason our slogan is Next Hundred Years of Dentistry. It never stops." Create, refine, create, refine.
We ran well over time and still did not get to Chicago, the new resins in detail, or the Ivoclar and GC partnerships properly. So a part two is coming.
If you want the full conversation, listen to the episode above. If you have any questions, please leave them below.
