Xinfu Xie, Co-founder, and Chief Product Officer at Chitubox, provides more detail on dental 3D printing workflows with CHITUBOX Dental, a cutting-edge pre-processing software tailored specifically for the dental industry. Supporting over 160 models of light-curing 3D printers, the software streamlines complex processes with one-click automation for common dental applications, significantly enhancing efficiency and precision. Designed to address critical challenges in cost, accessibility, and accuracy, CHITUBOX Dental enables clinics and factories to produce high-quality dental models using consumer-grade printers, reducing expenses while improving patient outcomes. Backed by years of expertise in light-curing technology and collaborations with dental professionals, Xie and his team are driving a new era of efficiency and precision in digital dentistry.
Chitubox Dental. Image via Chitubox
3DPI: Can you describe your application?
Xie Xinfu: CHITUBOX Dental is a light-curing 3D printing pre-processing and workflow software designed specifically for the dental industry. We collaborate with printer manufacturers and currently support pre-processing for over 160 models of light-curing printers. The standout feature is the ability to achieve one-click automatic pre-processing in the most common dental application scenarios, which greatly improves work efficiency and reduces the difficulty of getting started.
Whether it’s a factory or a clinic, users of CHITUBOX Dental will experience unprecedented convenience and efficiency.
3DPI: How does your application address a specific unmet need in the medical, dental, or healthcare field, and what impact do you see it having on patient care or treatment outcomes?
Xie Xinfu: This can be discussed in three aspects: effectiveness, efficiency, and economy. Firstly, in terms of effectiveness, this is the most fundamental point. From the software level, we need to provide enough tools to allow users to optimize printing precision. After all, the biggest impact on precision is from the printer and materials. Secondly, efficiency is key since users in the dental industry often have limited knowledge of 3D printing. The ability to quickly produce models is crucial. We have deeply optimized the software for ease of use, fault tolerance, and performance. Lastly, economy is a factor. Traditional dental-specific printers are relatively expensive. CHITUBOX Dental, through specific optimizations for the dental industry, allows users to achieve the same results with traditional consumer-grade printers as with professional machines, significantly reducing costs for clinics and factories.
Additionally, the software includes a hollowing feature to reduce material usage per model. Increased printing precision can reduce or even eliminate the need for secondary adjustments after a patient wears a dental crown, improving the patient’s treatment experience. Efficiency and economy will ultimately benefit each patient by reducing their time and financial costs.
Chitubox Dental Features. Image via Chitubox
3DPI: Can you describe the most significant technical or engineering challenge you faced while developing your application and how you overcame it?
Xie Xinfu: Before developing CHITUBOX Dental, we had already accumulated years of experience in the light-curing pre-processing field. Our CHITUBOX Basic and CHITUBOX Pro software have always had a high market share in the global light-curing 3D printing industry, and we have many loyal users in the dental field as well. However, we found that the dental industry has very high precision requirements. Optimizing precision is a complex issue involving materials and the performance of the printer itself. As the software acts as the link between materials and printer processes, it needs to ensure both print success and precision during the pre-processing stage. Thus, we had to delve into specific printing scenarios, abstract and extract parameters and functions that could optimize precision. In this process, we communicated and researched extensively with printer manufacturers, material suppliers, technicians, and doctors.
Manufacturing on Demand
3DPI: In what ways has your innovation streamlined or improved the efficiency of medical procedures, manufacturing, or patient recovery times?
Xie Xinfu: CHITUBOX Dental targets the most commonly used printer scenarios in dentistry, extracting model features to achieve automatic orientation, hollowing, filling, hole punching, and layout operations. Moreover, the software systematically improves processing efficiency, capable of completing the processing of 16 dental models, including orientation, hollowing, filling, hole punching, layout, and slicing, in just 45 seconds. Traditional software often requires 5-10 minutes to process 16 models. For factories, this single step saves 2080 hours per year. When combined with lightweight processing, it saves 2500 kg of material annually. We believe these efficiency gains ultimately benefit every patient.
3DPI: What role does collaboration with healthcare professionals or research institutions play in your development process, and how have these partnerships influenced your innovation?
Xie Xinfu: Through communication with professional dental practitioners, we gained a deeper understanding of the real pain points that need to be addressed in the 3D printing process. By exchanging ideas with them, we were able to develop better solutions for many issues. Of course, there are still several pain points in this process, and we will continue to communicate and gradually solve each one.
3DPI: Can you discuss any case studies or patient outcomes that highlight the real-world benefits of your technology?
Xie Xinfu: Some of our partner printer manufacturers have embedded material process packages into our software for end use by doctors. The doctors were able to complete the pre-processing of the models with just a few mouse clicks and achieved good results. Such cases are common in our daily communications with users.
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Author: Michael Petch
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