Current situation of oral cavity industry
Oral medicine is considered to be one of the "cross regions" of medicine and consumption because of its cross characteristics of health and aesthetics. With the rapid growth of China's national economy and the continuous improvement of people's consumption level, the domestic oral medicine industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and the industry's attention and popularity have also been rising. As the largest industrial country and single consumer market in the world, China and its oral medicine industry have broad development space and great development potential in the future.
In 2020, affected by the COVID-19, the global dental medical industry faced unprecedented challenges. In the post epidemic era, where challenges and opportunities coexist, countless practitioners of the oral medicine industry have raised the same question: What impact does the epidemic have on China's oral medicine industry?
This article will focus on the denture processing industry:
As one of the upstream pillars of the oral cavity industry, the operation mode of the denture processing factory has long been not labor-intensive. With the wide application of CAM/CAD technology, oral scanning, CBCT and other digital equipment, the time for denture production has been greatly shortened, and denture processing has become a technology and capital intensive industry, which will further develop in the direction of refinement and specialization.
Traditional denture processing is inseparable from the manual skills of dental technologists in making wax molds and casting crowns. Such manufacturing methods have led to a high rate of denture rework, which not only reduces the working efficiency of dental technicians, but also reduces the comfort of patients wearing dentures.
Compared with the traditional denture processing mode, which is highly dependent on manual work, digital dental technology replaces a lot of manual work with scanning/software/automatic processing equipment, promoting the transformation and upgrading of denture processing from labor-intensive industry to scientific and technological industry. After the application of digital technology, metal 3D printing was applied to the production of dentures, saving a lot of intermediate links and reducing human error; Wax type, shape, thickness of design, size of connector, bite height, and adjacent tightness can be monitored through digital technology and auxiliary means, and error prompt can be given in time.
Current situation of oral activity support industry
In terms of the current overall environment, dental technicians are defined as a marginal profession in society. In the oral cavity industry, the status and role of technicians also seem to be marginalized. At present, the dental technician industry in China is just in its infancy, and most of them still adopt the training method of master apprentice. The lack of talents, the lack of respect for their work, and the need to improve their income and treatment, etc., also directly or indirectly cause the related problems in the dental technician industry.
1. The loss of technicians is serious and the development of the industry is limited
Dental technician is a field with high requirements for practice and operation. Now it is also at the stage of rapid development of the industry. It is urgent to build a team of technicians and increase the scale of the industry. However, due to the poor working environment of traditional impression, the health of employees is affected and the loss rate of technicians is high. In this way, it not only causes the dilemma that almost no one is available at present, but also worries about the survival foundation of the industry in the future.
2. Difficulty in recruitment due to internal and external reasons
Internal reasons: on the one hand, the job seekers do not match the recruitment requirements of the enterprise, and on the other hand, the actual reasons such as the remuneration and benefits of the enterprise do not match the job seekers' expectations.
External reasons: First, the overall labor supply in China has shown a downward trend. The survey shows that the number of people of working age has continued to decline since 2012, with an average annual decrease of more than 3 million people, and the decrease is increasing. Second, the degree of education of workers is getting higher and higher, and their requirements for work are also correspondingly improved. The manufacturing industry is generally characterized by high labor intensity, more constraints, and low attractiveness, resulting in a shortage of technicians.
3. The injection of fresh blood into the industry decreased sharply
According to the survey, the salary of an ordinary dental technician is 3000-6000 per month. In addition, dental technicians need to undertake a lot of front-line production work. Many people give up the road to become dental technicians before they enter the profession and switch to other professions with easier or higher salaries, which directly leads to a sharp decrease in the injection of fresh blood into the industry. In addition, the long training period and low salary of technicians are also one of the important reasons for talent shortage.
4. The employment cost is rising, and the profit space of the enterprise is further compressed
According to the latest labor cost report released by Guangdong Province, the highest cost of employment for vocational skills is close to 9000/month. However, due to the epidemic, the profits of most enterprises are declining. How to increase profits while ensuring personnel stability is a practical problem to be solved.
5. The level of technicians is uneven, and the timeliness and quality are difficult to guarantee
Each procedure of denture making and the handling of tiny details depend on the technicians' skills and experience. Therefore, it is difficult to guarantee the timeliness of denture making time, but also affected by the technical differences in individual making in terms of technology and patient wearing.
In such a special period of time, how to follow the trend and adjust the talent strategy and development strategy of the enterprise is a problem that every enterprise will face and need to solve urgently. Digital and intelligent, it is a turning point at the tuyere.
The condition of movable support after digitalization
1. Scanning design
The traditional movable support is completed by technicians by hand waxing, embedding and casting, which is dependent on the technical level of technicians; Digital design is more flexible, the process is simple and convenient, the designed bracket fits well, the curve is more perfect, and the snap ring is reasonable and beautiful.
2. Typesetting
Based on SLM metal 3D printing principle, it has its particularity to affect the printing quality and efficiency of movable supports. In the early data processing process, the specific operations of adding and removing supports will affect the accuracy of movable supports; How to place the angle of the movable support will affect its fitting degree and forming efficiency. In view of the particularity of 3D printing of movable supports, our company has developed a special 3D printing processing software to preprocess the support data to achieve efficient and convenient typesetting operation.
3. Print
The DUAL-150 metal movable support special equipment of Riton Additive, under the premise of ensuring the accuracy of printed parts, works with dual lasers at the same time. Compared with single laser, the printing efficiency can be improved by 30-40%. The printing time of 15-17 metal supports only takes 3 hours. It can be used for the printing and molding of cobalt chromium alloy, TC4 titanium alloy, TA1 pure titanium and other metal powders, which is safe and efficient.
The DUAL-150 device can automatically start the cycle, fill the protective gas, detect the oxygen content and other operations. When the oxygen content is lower than the preset threshold, the device will automatically start printing. In the printing process, if the oxygen content is too high, the laser alarm, the motor alarm, the temporary power failure and other conditions occur, the equipment will automatically monitor and stop, and can achieve intermittent printing. External unstable factors will be included in the design scope, so as to reduce the printing failure rate.
4. Heat treatment
Use a vacuum cleaner to remove the powder on the surface of the support, put it into the heat treatment furnace, call the heat treatment process of the corresponding metal materials, and remove the stress on the metal support. Cobalt chromium alloy generally uses the heat treatment process of 1050 ° C for 1 hour, TC4 titanium alloy and TA1 pure titanium generally use the heat treatment process of 550 ° C for 1 hour. The total heat treatment time is about 3 hours, and the metal support with good elasticity and very low deformation rate can be obtained.
5. Grinding and polishing
For SLM technology, the optimized support structure can not only ensure that the support does not deform during the printing process, but also can be easily removed in subsequent links. It is only necessary to use the cutting pliers to gently clamp to remove the linear, reticular, reinforcing rod and other supports, or use an assistant to grind the grinding wheel to remove the longer reinforcing rod. The wearing surface of the 3D printing movable support is generally smooth without defects such as sand holes.
The plasma polishing machine can completely replace the follow-up traditional manual polishing link, and can complete the polishing of the bracket, step by step; Efficient and convenient, greatly reducing labor costs.
For the cobalt chromium alloy bracket, the polymer polishing treatment lasting for 20 minutes can further sharpen the brightness of the bracket details to achieve the mirror effect of extreme brightness.
Based on the application of 3D printing technology in the dental industry, Riton Additives aims to develop into a full line operator of dental solutions. It not only introduces the old to the new in the research and development of metal 3D printing equipment, but also provides technical services such as digital design and training, post production processing solutions, etc. In this phase, through the shared application of dual laser DUAL-150 metal printer in dental movable supports, Together with professionals in the dental industry, we discussed the excellent feasibility of a full set of digital solutions for metal 3D printing, and worked together to further promote the development of dental digitalization. At the same time, Ruitong Additives is also actively providing new ideas and new ways for the healthy development of the dental industry in the post epidemic era.
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