The State of 3D Printing in Dentistry - What's Really Happening

I recently sat down with Ayush Bagla, the former CEO of Ackuretta and now Managing Director at Pac-Dent, for an honest conversation about where 3D printing in dentistry actually stands right now.

Ayush has been in this game for over 12 years. He's built a printer company, navigated an acquisition, and now sits at the intersection of digital hardware and dental materials. If anyone has a clear-eyed view of the industry, it's him.

Here's what we covered.

The Industry Has Hit a Slower Gear

Let me be honest with you. The past couple of years have been tough.

Ayush put it well: the dental industry overall has been dealing with some real headwinds. You can see it in the market caps of the larger players. The pace of truly game-changing releases has slowed, and what we're mostly seeing now are incremental upgrades rather than major innovations.

That said, Pac-Dent as a business is still growing strongly. The reason, according to Ayush, is that they're more of a research company than a marketing machine. Every week, they're filing new patents and solving actual workflow gaps rather than chasing headlines.

That's a useful distinction.

Adoption vs. Utilization - Two Very Different Things

Here's where things get interesting.

We talk a lot about 3D printer adoption. But adoption and utilization are not the same thing, and the gap between them is bigger than most people in the industry want to admit.

In mature lab markets, Ayush says around 70-80% of labs are using 3D printing. Chairside, in a market like the US, it's about 18%. And of those chairside users, the data suggests around 80% are still only printing models. Very few are doing biomaterial applications, such as splints, crowns, and surgical guides, on a consistent basis.

In other words, most people bought a printer and are using it as a very expensive model-maker.

Why? Ayush's view is that CAD is the single biggest bottleneck. The printers have gotten good. The materials have gotten better. But on the design software side, the step between scanning and printing is still intimidating enough that most dentists don't push further.

This is where AI comes in, and it's the reason I actually feel optimistic about where this is heading.

What's New From Ackuretta/Pac-Dent

At Chicago Midwinter this year, the team launched three new products worth knowing about.

SOL SE

The SOL SE is an upgraded version of the original SOL. The headline improvement is speed, driven by an enhanced Z-axis motor, improved backlight power, and new resins engineered specifically for LCD printing. The firmware and software have also been refined based on years of real-world support data. SE stands for Special Edition, not a full generational leap, but a meaningful step up from the original platform.

Chroma Flash

This one is worth paying attention to.

Most people don't think too much about their curing unit. They buy one, they use it, and they mostly forget about it. But here's a fact that surprises a lot of dentists: only about 20% of the curing of a printed part happens on the printer itself. The other 80% happens in the post-curing unit.

That means the curing box matters a lot more than most people realize.

The Chroma Flash takes a different approach to curing than the standard LED units most dentists are using. Instead of LEDs, it uses a broad-spectrum bulb system. The wavelength window of a typical LED setup sits in a narrow band, roughly 390 to 420 nanometers. The Chroma Flash operates across a window of 280 to 950 nanometers.

What that means practically is more complete curing, better mechanical properties, and significantly better shade accuracy. Ayush explained that a common complaint with LED units is that splints and denture materials come out with a yellow tint or look translucent. The broad-spectrum approach solves for that.

If you've followed the dental 3D printing community at all, you'll have heard people rave about the Otoflash for years. The Otoflash came out in the 1990s and still gets talked about as the gold standard. The Chroma Flash is built on the same broad-spectrum technology class, with modern improvements.

Deliveries are expected in June. Retail pricing in the US is around $3,500.

On the topic of curing, we also got into nitrogen curing, a subject that generates a lot of debate online. Ayush's position is clear: with the right materials and the right curing unit, oxygen inhibition is not the problem it used to be. Pac-Dent consciously engineered their Rodin resins to work without nitrogen because they wanted a material that would function on any curing unit in any clinic. He estimates less than 1% of dentists are actually curing under nitrogen, which matches what I see, too.

A lot of the online discourse around nitrogen versus glycerin sounds like it matters a lot more than it does in the real world.

CrownPod

The CrownPod is still a code name at this stage, but it's the most conceptually interesting thing they showed in Chicago.

The idea is a pod-style printer designed to simplify chairside workflows by removing the CAD step entirely for certain applications. The first module targets pediatric dentists specifically. Pediatric clinics carry a large inventory of stainless steel crown kits. Ayush mentioned that some practices go through $200,000 to $500,000 of crown inventory per year. Dentists lose cases because they don't have the right size available. With the CrownPod, a clinician measures the tooth with a manual gauge, selects from a template library powered by AI, and prints a crown on demand.

No scanner required. No CAD software required.

The unit has an eight-bottle resin system with a built-in mixer and heater inside each bottle to keep fillers from settling. Each build uses a fresh vat and build platform, which keeps failure rates low and results consistent.

Pediatric crowns are just the first application. Ayush mentioned a roadmap of more than 20 applications planned for the platform, including whitening trays, which is where the Pac-Dent materials portfolio starts to become very interesting. Crown and bridge, inlays, onlays, splints, and models are all on that roadmap.

Expected to begin shipping in Q3 this year.

Where Pod Printing Is Headed

Pod printers are becoming more common. SprintRay, Planmeca, Asiga, and more of these systems are coming to market. The core value proposition is consistency and a lower failure rate, because the conditions are controlled and fresh consumables are used each time.

Ayush drew a useful comparison to the milling world, where single-use consumables are already standard and accepted. Clinicians pay a premium for predictable outcomes, and that logic applies equally here.

The tradeoff some people are pointing to is that pod printers for restorative and general-purpose open printers might end up sitting side by side in the same clinic. Ayush's view is that Pac-Dent's vertical integration of materials, hardware, analog products, and software under one roof gives them a different answer to that problem than companies that are just selling printers.

The Broader Picture

Here's how I'd summarise the state of the market.

There's an oversupply of printers right now, and a lot of them aren't sufficiently differentiated from each other. The companies that will win over the next few years are the ones solving real workflow problems, making CAD easier, making materials more reliable, and making the post-processing less fiddly.

AI is going to accelerate adoption, particularly on the software side. We're already seeing it in ortho planning tools and crown design. Ayush is right that the writing was on the wall when free software started lowering the barrier to entry. AI is the next version of that shift.

And the advice Ayush gave for anyone looking at their first printer is the same advice I'd give: talk to someone who's already done it. Not the sales rep. A colleague, a mentor, someone on the ground who has lived through the trial and error. The brand and the price point matter a lot less than getting the right fit for your practice and your goals.

If you want to go deeper on digital workflows and 3D printing, check out our courses at the Institute of Digital Dentistry.