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Ackuretta Interviews
Laboratorio Juliana André
- The Digital Dental Lab
Lab owner Juliana André from Portugal is the driving force behind the growing dental lab specialized in 3D printing dental prosthetics, who believes that digital is the only way to go forward.
If you follow Ackuretta's social media presence, you have definitely seen the work of Juliana André's team - beautiful aesthetics, great details and always arranged perfectly. Juliana André's skilled team of technicians shows that creating prosthetics is truly an art form. While 3D printing has been able to take over some of the heavy lifting, without the skillful touch of her techs, these pieces wouldn't come to live as they do. To celebrate International Women's Day, we meet her for a chat after almost 1 year of 3D printing night guards, crowns, models & much more with DENTIQ and ask her about her Ackuretta experience & her vision of the future of digital dentistry.
What motivated you to become a dental lab technician in Portugal? And what do you like most about your work?
What motivated me to train as a dental prosthetics technician was the joy of being able to give someone a new smile, and provide that positive change in the lives of people. It’s quite magical.
I’ve always loved manual work & art but at the same time, I have also had a love for technology. With the advancements of digital dentistry, I can combine the two in my work and provide patients with the best possible prosthetics they can have.
Why did you decide to integrate digital into your workflow?
Digital Dentistry is clearly the future.
We decided to integrate digital in order to expand the type of restorations that we produce with higher precision, aesthetics, and a higher degree of customization per patient.
The digital workflow not only allows all this but also helps us, technicians, to have greater control of the key features. While there certainly is a learning curve with 3D printing, the Ackuretta Team has been incredibly helpful and has made themselves available to us. We definitely appreciate good customer support.
Now that you use Ackuretta DENTIQ, how has your workflow changed? Which applications save the most time?
Without a doubt, our workflow has changed a lot with Ackuretta DENTIQ. In 3 hours we have 1, 2, 3 or even more printed splints, while when we do splints manually a single splint takes up 3 hours. Splints, provisionals, ready to be tested within 30 minutes.
In my opinion, the main advantage of the Ackuretta DENTIQ is the fact that the 3D printer has preset application parameters & many, many precalibrated resins, which were thoroughly tested by Ackuretta and the resin manufacturer.
It makes our work so much easier and reduces our work time significantly because we have great confidence in the quality of the resins and the 3D printer itself. DENTIQ is in fact very intuitive and easy to use.
Do you think 3D printing is the future of dentistry? And how do you see the evolution of digital dentistry in Portugal?
Yes, without any doubt that 3D printing is the future of dentistry.
Compared to a milling machine, a specialized dental 3D printer, like DENTIQ, does not require as much maintenance. There is not so much material wear & tear. 3D printers can print on all axes which gives us assurance that the work will actually come out accurately and will fit well in the patient’s mouth.
Dentistry in Portugal, I think, will undergo a real change. Laboratories will become more specialized in one type of service, increasing their quality to perfectionism.
I also predict that the 3D printing resins will experience a transformation and become more resistant, more capable of printing structures for permanent achieving similar properties as milled pieces, although it may take some time to reach that point.
What is your wish for 2022?
With the amount of information around 3D printing technology that exists at the moment, it is super important that laboratories continue to be updated, that they receive training and deepen their knowledge, because only then will they be able to deliver a product customized and with a very low margin of error.
Our wish for the year 2022 is to further increase the quality of our work & to continue to create smiles and positively impact people’s lives.
Thank you for your time & your insights! Ackuretta truly admires your work and your dedication to digital dentistry!
