Episode Transcript
[00:05 - 00:30] Rob: Welcome back to the Evolution of Dental Podcast, brought to you by Evolution Dental Science. We explore the stories of the people and the technology changing the world of dentistry. I'm your host, Rob Norton. Today our guest is the CPO of SprintRay which if you're anywhere, anywhere in digital dentistry, if you've ever heard of 3D printing, I'm sure you've heard of SprintRay. Hossein Bassir, welcome to the show, Hos. How are you today?
[00:30 - 00:34] Hossein: Thank you so much, Rob. I'm very good today. How are you doing?
[00:34 - 00:36] Rob: Doing excellent. Thanks for being a part of this.
[00:36 - 00:37] Hossein: Thanks for having me.
[00:37 - 00:49] Rob: What was your, what was your journey like getting into digital dentistry? Like, 3D printing, as I understand it, is one of the biggest growth markets. Excuse me, dentistry is one of the biggest growth markets for 3D printing, is that right?
[00:49 - 01:41] Hossein: That's absolutely correct. We started as a non dental specific company in 3D printing, and our focus was only in 3D printing. When we started back in 2015, we did a Kickstarter. And after selling the first few units on Kickstarter, we got to know a lot of dentists that started using the product. One of the… actually one of the biggest customers we had was Glidewell Dental. And then we started talking to them, figuring out what kind of improvements they would need on the product. Right away. And from there, our journey, getting into dental kind of started, but really in 2018, we decided to completely pivot to dentistry and focus our entire product portfolio, our entire effort on, on really trying to solve problems for dentistry that could be solved with 3D printing.
[01:41 - 01:45] Rob: That's awesome. So you were part of the original that was at the, was that the MoonRay printer?
[01:45 - 01:47] Hossein: Correct. Yeah, yeah, we started-
[01:47 - 01:51] Rob: MoonRay printers. So you were one of the founding members to introduce the MoonRay printer.
[01:51 - 03:20] Hossein: Correct, Correct. It was me, Amir Mansouri, our CEO right now, and Jing Zhang, who is our CTO. And the three of us kind of decided that we wanted to do a Kickstarter. Again back then, we didn't know much about how impactful 3D printing would be for dentistry. But then over, over the span of doing that Kickstarter and then coming up with the products right after that, we, we, we kind of changed our thinking. One funny thing is for engineers, and because all of us are engineers and designers, for us, everything was new when we entered dentistry. Like we had to learn about surgical guides and what the denture is and how it's being done. And I remember the pictures of surgical guides back then. They used to be very gory for us. We couldn't even look at it, but now it's just becoming a normal thing for us. So yeah, it's it's even till today, whoever joins the company, first thing we ask them to do is. Yeah, even if you have a knack for 3D printing, you got to have a knack for dentistry as well, getting to understand every one of these applications and how it's being used. So it's really merging or marrying two different worlds of, 3D printing and mechanical design and then making 3D printers that are used to be super industrial with what a clinic needs or a lab needs in this day and age to produce dental appliances faster, better, and, more affordable than before.
[03:20 - 03:25] Rob: What was that like going from an engineering background to basically chairside dentistry?
[03:25 - 04:47] Hossein: Honestly, at the beginning it wasn't that appetizing. But I mean, over time, we started understanding that a lot of dentistry is also a lot of mechanical design. I mean, that's where we, we we kind of, it was quite interesting for all of us to see, like, for example, ortho applications. It's a lot of just moving teeth around, which is mechanical design. So how an aligner or a bracket that you place can move teeth over time. So we found our, maybe small bits and pieces and crumbles of like, hey, this is interesting because it's very close to what we typically do. And then today in 2026, it's a lot of weird the other way around. We actually are very much focused on what is the best way of delivering such and such material, because it's all driven by material science at the end of the day. And how do we make a printer that can deliver that material science? How do we make a cure machine? How do we come up with the software that connects all of them together? So I think in many ways for our engineers, for our designers, for myself, we are still going about our daily lives with with the same skill set that we had, but with a different lens of how do we apply that to this industry.
[04:47 - 05:02] Rob: A different lens. That's a good way to phrase it. What were some of the more surprising aspects of it as you, as you stepped into this, like things that you didn't expect to be important or things that you thought were more important, and as you got into it turned out not to be as crucial.
[05:02 - 08:54] Hossein: I think actually, one thing that that proved to be more crucial than before was that, when we were using the printer, for example, for our own purposes, at some point we were like, okay, this is good enough in terms of accuracy and what comes out, because we are engineers, we are at the end of the day when we expect tolerances of like, I don't know, 20 microns here and there. We're talking about maybe a final product that is injection molded or it's machined CNC. But then when we entered dentistry, those numbers didn't actually apply. They didn't. They needed more and more accuracy and, more essentially a better quality of outcome than we even needed for our own purposes. And that still continues today. That's why a lot of the hard work goes into making sure that the final deliverable is very much in tune with what that dentist, used to be getting from dental labs back in the day, or used to be very or it is very similar to what the expectation is. That has been one of the biggest challenges that we have had over the years. That's why we had to continue evolving our product line very quickly, because as soon as, as soon as you realize that, okay, what you have is pretty good for maybe, 80% of the market, but then there's this 20% market that actually needs it to be even more reliable, even better than before. Then you have to kind of again change, change your standards, change your change, change a rule with what you measure everything with. And then go back to the drawing board and redo everything. I think at the end of the day, what's rewarding for the team is hard work. It is a lot of, you know, we have multiple teams around the world, and the work I know is being passed to the next team so they can do it at a different time zone, and then it's passed back to us to do different things on it. It's it's a lot of conversations, a lot of, a lot of decision making that we have to do on a daily basis and a lot of random conversations that if when we have visitors sometimes coming to our office, from, from different partners, we have the amount of information that is being traveled around them is just sometimes mind boggling. And they start asking questions like, how do you guys manage different, different aspects of this? Because it's all very different. There's a team that only focuses on applications and that team goes from application to application, for example. And those guys are engineers. They measure everything, they measure the outcome, and then they go back to the software team, they go back to the hardware team, or they go back to the materials team asking for adjustments to certain aspects of this so we can actually get a final product. Very nice and easy. So the aspect that I wanted to bring up is, how rewarding at the end of the day, this is. When we get testimonials from customers or from patients who actually did, for example, there's a lot of full mouth reconstruction that we get to see that is being done with OnX Tough 2, which was one of the great materials that we have put on the market. And those are just when you see the reaction of people going from almost nothing to the full mouth rehab that happens in one day, it's very impactful. It gets all of us very emotional about actually what we do that is really rewarding for us. What we always say internally is that it's not technology alone, because that doesn't do anything for anyone. It's what the outcome of the tech is that makes a difference for, for the daily lives of people. So as much as we want to talk about mechanicals and how we design and engineer different things, what matters at the end, what actually gives us a lot of hope about the future. What we do is the impact that we can make with doing these kinds of things.
[08:54 - 09:04] Rob: Yeah, you're truly changing people's lives. The products you build are truly going to use chairside to change lives and impact people's daily interactions with the world.
[09:04 - 09:05] Hossein: Yeah, yeah.
[09:05 - 09:28] Rob: And in your opinion, how do you feel that 3D printing, excuse me, that dentistry became the biggest growth market for 3D printing. What unique aspects and combinations of factors do you think came together for that? And, also where do you see 3D printing going chairside as well as in laboratory applications?
[09:30 - 12:33] Hossein: You know, I think the main driver for that is the fact that we are all different from each other. Our anatomies are different. So by that token, our needs are different. My occlusion is different from yours, and somebody else's tooth is different from another person. There is rarely one size fits all sort of a situation for doing specialty dentistry. So 3D printing, the biggest promise of 3D printing is mass customization. And that really aligns with what people need at the end of the day, because you don't want the same night guard that I wear, you wear, and somebody else's from the geometry and what comes out of the printer. You really want to fine tune it to the anatomy of the patient. And that's where 3D printing excels. And not that it didn't exist, but people had to rely on maybe their local lab, and there was no, not as much as immediacy that you see today with that. Where 3D printing is going to go, it’s going to go where… I think, going back to my earlier point about material science, you could grow 3D printing on its own. And a lot of other companies are doing this, and by that same token, a lot of new technology is being developed. But then when you actually focus on dentistry, then you realize that, you're not just making a 3D printer for the sake of a better 3D printer, or you're not making other cure machines or whatnot. You're making it for the quality of the outcome. And in dentistry, everything is driven by material science. This is where we actually have one of the, maybe the most intriguing conversations with the dentists themselves, because a lot of them are obviously coming from the world in which 3D printing didn't exist when they went to school, when they started doing dentistry. And today it's completely changing. So a lot of our conversations end up being about the material itself: the shade of it, how the translucency works, especially when we talk about restoratives where beauty matters the most. And then there is function too. And the materials have to essentially hit many different targets. It's aesthetics, it's mechanical, it's wear, and those are the hardest things to solve. Where we come to the plate, with our engineering apparatus, is something like Midas itself. It's like, oh, if we want to push dentistry with 3D printing materials, you kind of have to get over this issue of materials being very, very difficult to print. And I think dentists are used to this because they have been doing injectables and a lot of other things in the past. But then in 3D printing, we can't deal with viscosity that easily. So that was the basis of why we had to do, the Midas 3D printer, which is essentially pressing in the material-
[12:33 - 12:56] Rob: Speaking of the Midas, sorry, I don't mean to totally interrupt you, but like, and I find that to be absolutely fascinating. I think it's a very good example of what you were saying, which is that material science is actually leading the development of the technology itself. Would you say that's correct? And please, talk to us about what's different about the Midas versus traditional resin 3D printing or any other variety of 3D printing in dentistry?
[12:56 - 15:47] Hossein: Absolutely. I have to, I have to explain multiple points, and then I'll try to bring it all together, because I think the development of Midas was one of those things that even internally, when we started working on it, we told everybody that, hey, look, this is not only- it's like the iPhone for us, it's that iPhone moment of like, hey, this thing is not only so capable of opening new avenues for dentistry, but it’s also super easy to use. It was two things that, you know, as designers and engineers, again, you kind of dream to work on such a product one day in your lifetime, and the reason for that was that… A couple of years back, we did Pro S. And on Pro S we decided to give different kits to the machine. So we, we kind of fine tuned its capabilities as if you have a single car, but then by adding a few components and replacing some components, now we can take you to a racetrack or you can take it to off-roading. So we kind of came up with the idea of like, hey, what if we come up with some kits that allow people to print crowns, for example, which was the Crown Kit idea, or we knew printing hybrid dentures is one of those things that people want to do very quickly. So what if we find a way that we allow the printer to print hybrid dentures quicker than other applications? Because that's what matters to them. By doing that exercise, especially in the Crown Kit with Pro S, we learned that, in order to print crowns chairside, you really want them to be printed very quickly. We are against such machines like CEREC and other applications of those machines, and you really want to be able to compete with that and be essentially faster than those. And more cost effective. But then one thing that was in our way was the fact that, I think with Crown Kit, we had more than 50% ceramic filled material, which is still, we have it in the markets called Ceramic Crown. Great material, our first attempt at doing such a thing. We learned a lot about what it takes to actually do, a material for definitive and temporary crowns. What are the expectations? What is the response from the patients and from the doctors? By doing such exercise, we realized that we really need to go beyond 50% ceramics, not only because of aesthetics, but also because of strength and improving the wear. And then as soon as you start adding more fillers to the resin, the resin stops being- it becomes very viscous, becomes like honey or even harder to actually move. And this is where traditional 3D printing was very much falling behind. You have to slow down the printer so much so you could compensate for the viscosity of the material.
[15:47 - 16:04] Rob: And for those who don't know 3D printing as well as you or I do, why is viscosity a problem? Like what's the difference between, say, an anycubic resin that sounds like water sloshing around in a model, versus something like Crown, the Ceramic Crown resin you have, which sounds a little bit more like syrup.
[16:05 - 16:06] Hossein: Correct. Correct.
[16:07 - 16:12] Rob: Like what's the different challenges involved in trying to print that like?
[16:12 - 19:23] Hossein: Right. So it's all about how gravity essentially fills in the resin between every layer of your print. The traditional SLA, 3D printers dip into resin. They cure that layer. They go all the way up, they wait for resin to replenish, and they go back into it. When your resin is very watery, that's easy because gravity essentially pulls it back very quickly. When you have a paste-like material, then you really have to wait for it to move again. That means you have to slow down your printer if it's relying on the traditional way of SLA printing, by a lot. So you can actually finish a crown maybe in two hours if the material is very slow. So that makes it almost unusable for a chairside application. Maybe useful for some other applications of making crowns that are not bound by time. But if you're, as a dentist, you're planning on finishing your procedure in 45 minutes or an hour, you can’t really- The printing has to be maybe ten minutes, 15 minutes of that. You can't wait that long for it. So the main driver is again going back to the material science. The main driver is what's in the material and not not much about what the printer can do. And when we wanted to then add more fillers and more ceramic particles to the material, we ended up with something that moves like a, like a very viscous glue. So it's no longer your watery resin that is easy to handle. And because of that, we looked at different ways of speeding up the process, essentially. And our CTO, Jing had this [idea], we called him crazy at that moment. Hey, I could press in the material and force it through the process. And honestly Amir and I looked at him and we were like, well, let's see if we can make this work, because on paper it sounds really good. And it is something that I think because of how resin and the, the, the print platform and the resin tank, which are typically and traditionally different parts, are now part of this one capsule. On this concept that he had, we were kind of intrigued by how easy to use that could be. So for us, it was during the development. During the concept stage, it was about two main drivers. One was, hey, material science, we can now make the most viscous materials and it doesn't matter anymore. And then on the other hand, was just this ease of use, the promise of like, hey, I can just plug this in into the printer. And then when it's done, I just take it out. I take my appliance out. That was for us again, coming from our traditional line of 3D printers having a resin tank, having the print platform, having the resin itself, and having to explain that to the customers that, hey, you need to clean this, you need to make sure this other thing works. That was just, that was a fresh breath or breeze of innovation that we were kind of craving for because-
[19:23 - 19:24] Rob: Like an “iPhone moment”, like you said.
[19:24 - 21:03] Hossein: Correct, exactly! And then at the end of the day, what we have realized over the years is that we really don't want the dentist to be sitting and spending time with these machines. We want everybody in the office to be able to use that. So the idea of like, hey, there's this light at the end of the tunnel that I can tell anybody how to use this machine in like five minutes or less. That was so intriguing. We kind of did try to run two parallel projects- Going back in time now, because Pro 2 was very important for us. Going from Pro S to Pro 2 was a huge leap of accuracy, speed and what we could do with it. But then the idea of Midas was also so intriguing that we couldn't say no to it. So we told the team that, hey, look, we have to protect the base, so we have to make sure we have the next generation of the traditional SLA style. But this other thing is “the iPhone”. You can't say no to it because when you have- internally, we believe when you have great innovations like that, you cannot sit on it for a long time. You gotta like, put it out. You got to refine it by doing that. That's the result that you see today. We actually did print a lot of stuff that we could have never been able to print with the traditional printers during the development stage just to make sure that we have the right product. And again, Midas is not- Midas is for years to come because Midas as a hardware is ahead of what material development can do right now. Soon we are going to have some materials that are right now, pending regulatory approvals, that are going to be 70% filled materials. That is just going to change the game.
[21:03 - 21:24] Rob: 70%? Wow!
[21:04 - 21:53] Hossein: 70%, yeah, I mean, we have 60% right now. It's called the Crown HT that is being loved by the dentists who are using it. The translucency is beautiful and very nice. They use it for a lot of prepless veneers. I'm sure you have seen, because of the accuracy of these machines, now you can print up to as thin as 150 microns, veneers that are no prep. People just do that on a daily basis. Yes it is technique sensitive. It is. You have to know what you're doing and control the design. But as soon as you master that and you figure it out, it becomes really plug-and-play. Anybody can do that and do it in their offices. I mean, surely you've seen a lot of examples of many doctors that are doing no prep veneers right now.
[21:53 - 21:55] Rob: It's a very popular technique.
[21:55 - 21:56] Hossein: Yeah, yeah.
[21:57 - 22:05] Rob: It's becoming more and more popular all the time, especially as the technology that can actually accommodate that grows, and SprintRay has been no small part of that.
[22:05 - 22:07] Hossein: Absolutely.
[22:07 - 22:31] Rob: I've heard people compare the Midas to the, the- the next generation's version of the CEREC in other words. Like CEREC for a whole new generation of doctors, and that the materials are impressive and that they're growing. I'm very excited to hear about the 70%, ceramic filled material. Like what do you see the biggest advantage of that being? Or what inspired you to bring that to the market?
[22:31 - 25:38] Hossein: I think one of the things that we saw, from the experience of doing Ceramic Crown and then later Crown HT is that wear, especially with patients that have more acidic environment in their oral hygiene, or people who are smoking, it becomes a bit more difficult and actually much easier if you have more ceramics, because then you can polish them much better. That means the surface is going to be less porous. So when you add all of these attributes to each other, you end up with the idea that we definitely have to increase the amount of ceramics. And then again, the biggest driver and enabler for that was the way Midas prints stuff. And 60% HD right now that we have out there is one of those resins that are almost getting to the point that is just very viscous. But then the 70% is one of those things that when you have it, like in a cup, for example, and you want to put it upside down, it just doesn't move. Like it just sits there in an upside down cup. So that really needs something like Midas to be able to print that. But yeah, I mean, wear resistance is one of the biggest factors, you want this appliance that is 3D printed to be really as good as what pure glass could do or pure ceramics could do. So this is where, again, the material science is pushing every one of us to do better. And I think maybe one thing that people miss about software and software technology is that, because we're working with light, there's something called a photo-initiator inside of this mix of viscous resin that you see. Obviously you can't see it with your eyes, but those particles are there and those particles react to even natural sunlight. But with natural sunlight, they're going to be very slow, because the full spectrum of light goes from, from beginning to end. But what we need for actually 3D printing them accurately is the UV light, which the printer is using to cure the material. But yeah, it still works with light. And what controls the light is the software. It's the most intangible part of it. People really glance over the software, maybe the best thing people would notice about our software is the ease of use and how it's automated, for the most part. But then what they don't see is what's behind the scenes that is actually running all these machines. And that was one of the and still is one of the largest teams that we have within the building. And the number of engineers that we have in the software side of things is, by far more than any other department that we have. Just because… You really need a few people to come up with the best mechanical ideas. And if you really [want] people to come up with the best formulas for materials. But to do software, we're talking about millions of lines of code that has to come together without any issues, without any bugs. So it can make it happen. So you go from this thing that you see on a digital screen to a physical thing on the other end, seamlessly.
[25:38 - 26:33] Rob: Seamlessly. And the software, I mean, people frequently underrate software. It's truly the driver because it doesn't matter how fast your car is or what kind of speeds you can take corners at if you don't have a driver who's behind the wheel who's competent to take the car and make it do that. And the software is what carries you through that process. Like the hardware is awesome. Who cares about how good the hardware is if there's no way to relate to it? And the software is truly what your average user is interfacing with, make sure they take resin in and out of the printer and they run it through post-processing. But it's really like you said, it's the software that's the magic that takes this hardware and really shows it how to dance. And speaking of like you were talking about the ease of use. Can you tell us a little bit more about, like, LabConnect and the learning curve for how you adopt a 3D printer like a Pro 2 or Midas into a practice?
[26:33 - 26:46] Hossein: Absolutely. Let me explain the origins of the idea of why we had to come up with LabConnect. So-
[26:46 - 26:47] Rob: Yeah! Please do!
[26:47 - 33:19] Hossein: When we go back in the history of SprintRay. Essentially, the promise back in the day, especially when we shifted to do dentistry only was that. Hey, you have your lab. It's great. But if you want a quick night guard, if you want a quick copy of this model, or if you already have an intraoral scanner, why would you want to wait to send that to somebody else and get a model back? Or why are you still pouring stone? You have a digital scanner and that's the gateway to do everything digital. Back in the day, we were not talking about hybrid dentures or anything of that kind. It was just surgical guides and models, you know, basic stuff. And that really took off because people understood the promise of what this is essentially enabling. But then over time, we came up with new materials that kind of then started to displace some of the work that was being sent to the labs and being done in-house. So, as people who were in the industry noticed, we also noticed a lot of labs just started buying their own printers, and they started printing stuff instead of just milling them, or instead of, again, sending it to somebody else. The printers really enable a lot of smaller labs to actually grow and become bigger. And we also came up with our own digital services for providing design. And in seeing how that took off, especially in the case of this is where maybe we started having hybrid denture design, which is one of the applications that again, it makes the most impact for the patient, but also for us, it's one of the biggest drivers for the business. And we noticed that yes, we are part of the temporary-ization and some people actually place OnX Tough 2 that is 3D printed, as a long term temporary. But then when we get into the final, maybe milled zirconia or final milled PMMA for that matter, people have to step out of our platform and then they have to rescan everything. And then there is no copy of the original design, for example. It causes a lot of issues for the customers at the end of the day.
So we didn't want them to start digital and then have a breeze with that and then end up with a workflow that maybe the end of it is not super obvious. This is one pattern that we saw. The second pattern was the fact that a lot of dentists are going to work with any labs out there, and I think the better we can facilitate the communication between the doctor and the lab, then we are providing better customer experience. So these are the origins of why we had to think about something called LabConnect. So LabConnect today is starting [with] a few simple features. Now your lab can talk to your printer, with your consent, directly. Let's say your lab has finished a digital design, and they want to send it to you. You don't have to use email anymore or Dropbox or Google Drive for that matter. All you need to do as a lab is provide this kind of a connection between yourself, and the clinic that you will send the job to. And then set up a job in our print setup, which is cloud based. And then click send and share it with the doctor. And then that will show up on their end and they just send it to the printer. And you don't have to go back to your email to look for it to reprint it, for example. It's already part of your archive of files. So today, to answer your question, the second part of your question, today if you have a Midas or a Pro 2 and you want to start incorporating that into your practice, the first thing that I recommend to anybody is to make sure that you get an education. We provide education. A lot of labs that are supporting our products provide education. I cannot stress enough how, especially on the early days of learning about this. If you come from another 3D printer, using our product it’s going to be a breeze. Not a problem. And I have to admit, after all these ten years since the beginning, we have made a lot of improvements. Everything has gotten much easier to use, but our job is not done yet. We have a lot to do to make it even better, even more seamless and easier to use. But really, the thought process is first we started with the printer. And then we had a cure machine because those are the absolute necessary things that you have to make in order to make sure that the final device is biocompatible and easily used, in a medical space. But then the wash machine, for example, was another discovery for us that not only we needed, but also we needed to deliver a certain wash quality at the end, because we're talking about dental specific applications. Most 3D printers and ecosystems out there are trying to do everything, so dentistry is just part of it. But when you take a look at our wash machine, for example, it actually washes the appliance twice, because that was what we learned from actually our earlier customers doing that. So we took notes from what people are doing and how they're making it for their own workflow. And we try to make these machines and, and our software, especially in a way that is accommodating these differences in how people want to do things. The goal here is to make it as easy as something that you can have your assistant easily do it, or somebody that is at the reception desk. So if you need that quick night guard, if you need that quick retainer, you can actually just within a few minutes you can get a design and go about printing it and post-processing it, and delivering it. We are not trying to remove the joy of driving from that. You know, it's just like, hey, when you need it, this can do it for you. Bring those understandings and learnings from those industries and apply to dentistry. If you want to bring a design from anywhere else, the system is open. But if you want a quick design that actually gets you going for the day, we can help with that. And we provide that kind of ease of use and immediacy for people to be able to do that. And really, the other components of the system, especially on the hardware side of things, we see that as our responsibility to keep improving them, keep making them better in a way that you don't need much of a training to be able to use them.
[33:19 - 34:35] Rob:
So, for example, one of the- and I really like what you're touching on, especially with referring to, like you're not trying to remove the driving experience, but when you're stuck in traffic, that's not really a fun driving experience to start with. You're not trying to remove the human element from it, you're just trying to ease the process of optimizing what you do want to spend your time on. For example, I do some 3D printing at home. Like I said, I’m a nerd, I love it. Some of the stuff on the shelf behind me is resin 3D printed. And one of the things about that is I've been in this for, well, the MoonRay was my third or fourth resin printer, for example. So I've been doing this for a while. And it's like I said, it's sort of a side passion nerd thing for me. So I have, in my home set up, I have a couple of just rudimentary printers, big build plates. Everything's manual. Take that stuff out. I have to time how long I leave it in an alcohol bath because I have an old, you know, single spinning bath. And I go back and forth between one and the other, like you said, two stage cleaning. I have a timer sitting next to my big old huge guest wing curing unit, so that I know when to take it out. But with SprintRay you don't have to worry about any of that! Tell us why that is, if you don't mind, Hos!
[34:36 - 34:42] Hossein: We always use this terminology. We say it needs to be “microwave easy” because anybody can use a microwave.
[34:42 - 34:44] Rob: “Microwave easy”. I like that!
[34:44 - 37:39] Hossein: “Microwave easy”, yeah. And that is what I've been trying to use with the team here. Hey, if I can design a crown, then I'm sure a doctor can easily, in a few minutes, design a crown. But, I mean, this is a- and it's really- this is where I think it becomes… Maybe the most fun part of the job, for engineers especially because, you know, like, oh, I can connect this and that to the other thing. And then I can remove this part of the process. And this is where the creativity kicks in for our team. And the ideas are always nice. But somebody has to make them a reality. And that is where the bulk of the work comes in. You know, I can easily talk about an idea of, oh, I would like to be able to print a crown in a minute, but how do we get there? This is where we actually have to put in place people and train them and make sure that they're using their best talents, best ideas. They could test them out. They can put them all together at some point, bring something to market that makes an impact. But again, a lot of times we learn from customers, you know, people who initially used MoonRay, for example, you being one of the users, started giving us a lot of feedback, a lot of sometimes a lot of hard time as to like, hey, this is not doing what it was supposed to be doing. And they were right, because we were a young company with a very simple manufacturing backbone back then. But today it's a different company, obviously much bigger. And we can move mountains with our engineering apparatus and, and our understanding of the dental market. But then again, I don't want anybody to make this mistake that our job is not done yet. There is still a lot of material science that needs to be explored. A lot of improvements could be made to our software and hardware. So we are here to keep working on that. I mean that that's really what drives everybody here. If our job was done, there was nothing to talk about anymore. But no, we clearly see that just like how in aerospace, humans are pushing the boundaries. In other medical fields, things are still explored and ideas are being explored and things are being discovered. Same here. Our slogan is, and I was part of picking this slogan, and I'm very proud of it, actually, as one of the things we came up with back in the day of doing the initial branding. It’s this sentence that says, the next 100 years of dentistry, and there's still another 100 years left. It's not like because of us being ten years old, there's only 90 left. The idea is that this is just going to keep growing. Keep continuing, because to me, as long as there are human beings thinking about what the future could hold and they can push for that. Our job is just going to continue, and we have to deliver on that.
[37:41 - 38:42] Rob: Exactly. Circling back a little bit to, for example, the Midas and, the different processes involved with printing that I feel like SprintRay excels at making easier. One of the things that I, really first off, I'd love you to talk about, is how long it takes to print one Midas crown. And also like the process of- one of the things I think is really cool about SprintRay is that all of your components involved from the printer through the end of the wash process, and everything in between, are smart enough to know not only what they're curing and how long to run the process, but also that it has different little chips and stuff built in to recognize the different materials so that the operator doesn't necessarily have to keep track of that, because maybe it is an assistant who's got three operatories full of whining patients to get back to and just trying to change things out and get this temporary out so that she can deliver it to the doctor. Like if you could talk a little bit more about that, I think that our audience would really appreciate hearing exactly what goes into that.
[38:42 - 42:57] Hossein: Absolutely. This is a great example of how software can actually connect individual hardware pieces together. I mean, again, we got inspired by other companies doing similar things in different realms. So this kind of continuity between the process, while everything is cloud connected anyways, right. And we have this kind of mothership in the cloud that is looking at what's going on. So one of the obvious things for us at least, was that, hey, we should make these things talk to each other. So, as you said, somebody who just printed something 20 minutes ago may not remember exactly what happened, but then the next machine, that is in charge of maybe washing it or curing it is going to know that, hey, you just did this and it finished. Do you want to continue and essentially bring continuity into the workflow? So that's one of the features that is available. And it's getting refined as we speak too because again, you know, we can always improve things very quickly by getting feedback, by knowing how it works. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we don't want to make products that get in your way. You know, the whole promise of technology is removing these frictions and getting out of the way. In design there is something called that, if your design is good, it's not in your way. You don't even notice good design. That's the point of it. But the design is not flashy. It's not going to be like, hey, look at me here. It's something that it just happens without you even noticing it. I think early days of maybe, for example, the iPhone, it had a home button. And if you were lost, you can easily just get back to home and start over. Right. This is 15 years ago now. Today they even removed that. So you see how as we learn how to deal with technology, we also make improvements in a way that okay, now that you don't need that home button anymore, it will go away. When we talk about our products again, I think one of the best examples is the difference between how Midas works and how typical 3D printers like Pro 2 work. And we noticed this friction for people that, hey, is my tank clean? Is my resin fresh? Is this ready to go? I mean, you as a MoonRay user, you remember the early days of like, oh, hey, check the bottom of the tank. Maybe there is something on it and that's why it doesn't print right. Well, we removed that whole conversation by giving you the capsule that every time you pop it in, it's fresh resin, it's clean, and it's super ready to be a medical device. So all you need to do is just pop it in. When it's done, take it out and be done with it. That process for a full crown takes about, depending on the size of the crown, sometimes the crowns are much larger, but give or take, it's about 12 minutes or less to get to a full contour crown. If it's a taller crown, which I've seen many people printing temporary implant crowns. So those could be a 15 minute print. But at the end of the day, 15 minutes of a print, and then you clean it and then you cure it within, like a few minutes. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes, especially if you have the design ready. If you don't have the design, what we offer also helps you design a crown in five minutes or less, depending on how complex the case could be. And that whole process is now less than half an hour for somebody to do a full, temporary-ization of a crown, or even placing a final crown or inlay or onlay, which I think the case for inlay/onlay, especially with Midas, is even larger. You used to sit down and like, block out and do this and that and then and then, we'll inject the resin and then, cure it layer by layer by hand. A lot of hard work that that time and attention could be spent on a second patient, on a third patient in that moment. And with Midas, all you need is the scan, you design it very quickly, and then you're just placing that inlay or onlay.
[42:57 - 44:28] Rob: It's a great application for inlays and onlays because milled applications for it like a zirconia inlay or onlay- First off onlays and inlays are a great way to preserve an existing tooth. I'm a huge believer in minimally invasive dentistry wherever it can be exercised, and the the, heh, trouble with milling, anybody who's ever milled an onlay or inlay before knows, that you have to print a model and you have to print model, because at the end of the day, the milling machine, that tool has to touch every single surface of what you're manufacturing, and it's just not reasonably possible with something as small as an inlay or onlay, because there still has to be supports to hold it up. And you're talking about milling it out of the raw material. It's a big, you know, a disk. So you can't really get to the sides of it so much with that little tool tip. Whereas in 3D printing, you don't have any of these obstacles. All your supports are concentrated in one area, and there's no, there's nothing that's going to inhibit a tooltip that doesn't exist from hitting the specific little tiny aspects of it. And so it kind of removes a whole other barrier there. And again, like you were saying, to be able to take that from scanned to delivered in about a half an hour. It's an incredible value proposition for, for any application, for any practice. Especially if you have your software integrated with exocad, which SprintRay does, where you can just go from design to printer to seeding the case in a very short order.
[44:28:03 - 44:36] Hossein: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of exocad I think for us engineers, there is this software called SolidWorks.
[44:36 - 44:37] Rob: Oh yeah. Solid Works! Yeah.
[44:37 - 46:19] Hossein: Very similar to what exocad is for dentists, and it's very powerful. Like if somebody, if somebody has a knack to go learn exocad, definitely go do it. Because then that gives you not only inlays and onlay applications, but also like, you can do anything you want. Like it opens up, especially with 3D printing and material science that enables you to print dentures, hybrid dentures, crowns, night guards, retainers, this and that. If you just know how to design that piece, that dental appliance, then you have the best machine to give you an output of any kind you want. With the greatest materials that we have available right now. Exocad is a door opener for any dentist to learn. It's like being an engineer and not knowing SolidWorks or some other CAD software. You're going to be very limited. So I think exocad is great. We have an integration with exocad, as you mentioned, that, I think we, we work very closely with the, with the team at Align Companies and not only with our integrations with iTero, which enables people to bring a lot of scans directly to our platform, but also exocad being part of that company, now, it's fully integrated with our platform. We have great relationships with all our partners doing these kinds of things because we understand that we don't provide the digital input. So because of that, we have to really work with all of them to make sure that this transfer of data is very, very seamless. But yeah, exocad. Definitely. It's a big plus for any dentist if they have the time and attention to go learn it. The best investment you may ever make in your career in dentistry.
[46:20 - 46:47] Rob: It's a perfect combination really. 3D printing and CAD design. There's just no better combination than exocad and SprintRay right there. It opens up so many gateways. And speaking of like I love your slogan, the next 100 years of dentistry, let's narrow it down to ten. Where, Hos, do you see dentistry going with 3D printing? With technology? Where do you see the next ten years? If you could just wave your wand over your 3D printed ball, hehe, your crystal ball.
[46:48 - 51:01] Hossein: I think where we are headed in ten years… is making design much easier than before. Maybe making design being something that, for, at least for the basic applications that don't need as much attention. Like I'm not talking about hybrid dentures, for example. Those are very sensitive, very technique sensitive things. But, rendering design is a thing of the past that you have to worry about. Again, somebody who wants to learn exocad, they have full customization tools, but if somebody just wants something quick, design shouldn't get in their way of getting it. So for us, a lot of work on the software side to make sure design is seamless, design is easy and anybody can do it. Material science, it's going to continue doing its magic and coming up with better materials, improving mechanical properties. Hardware has to catch up. I think, speed of doing things is something that we can always improve. We're not going to just sit around and say, okay, what we have today is good enough. As much as physical boundaries will allow, we are going to push the speed of delivery of these things, not only with the printer, with the cure machine, with the washing machines. See how much we can compress time. We are really in the business of compressing time when we talk about that, how much we can achieve. And then I think about the other pieces, yeah, obviously we are competing with many other companies doing these kinds of things. But at the end of the day, I think we all have the same goal. And I think in ten years there's going to be more unified goals. And those unified goals are the result of ideas like LabConnect. It's like, hey, we are not against labs. We're actually friends with labs. A lot of labs are buying our products. So how do we connect these people to each other? How do we bring a more native connection between our customers that are clinics and another set of customers that we have that are labs? How do we enable labs to do even better? Because on the other hand, labs and clinics are also feeding each other. So how do we enable labs to actually do better in regards to what they can deliver for the practice? And again, LabConnect in creating those connections, or another way of thinking about how we could do this. Not every problem needs new hardware. Sometimes the solution is right in front of us and it could be done with software. And that's why we're making a lot of effort behind, making sure our software is more friendly than before and easier to use and more, more out of the way and more, being in the background helping people connect with each other and accomplish more. Being able to service even more patients with the digital ecosystems that we have. Scanner on one end, 3D printer on this end, software on the other hand. This is just something that we are going to build on and continue to refine and revamp. Sometimes we have to start over in some of the areas and we are not scared of doing that. We are a young company, and, with a lot of, a lot of knack for, for making new technology work for people, not just releasing technology just because it's cool. And I think, stuff like Midas or Pro 2 itself and our AI stuff has been a great testament to, hey, we don't want to just put out an AI thing. We want it to work. We want to make it easy, and it needs to actually respond to a problem rather than just being, hey, look at this shiny thing that we can make. This is another reason why I believe most of this stuff is going to be driven by software, driven by what AI can bring to the table. This has been the promise of SprintRay to it from day one. Within the past ten years, we put up multiple generations of different things, but that was just a necessity of getting to a point where we are today, in which we have very great systems and machines that are super reliable. They are very fast. The outcome is very accurate. It's just if we could do this ten years ago, trust me, we would have done it, hehe.
[51:03 - 51:14] Rob: Brilliant. Brilliant, man. I really appreciate you having been here. This has been such a fun conversation. Where can people find you online? Where can people look up you or SprintRay, follow on all your socials?
[51:14 - 51:37] Hossein: I'm very much active on our Facebook group! Our company is available on Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Instagram. Our website is SprintRay.com, very easy. If you have any questions. If you need anything, you can reach out to me directly. And, we are always ready to jump on the next customer call and help with that and make sure the people are having the best time with our products.
[51:37 - 51:40] Rob: Excellent. Thank you again for being a part of this.
[51:40 - 51:42] Hossein: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
[51:42 - 51:51] Rob: And thank you for watching the Evolution of Dental Podcast. Please remember to like, subscribe and share this show with your friends and remember, never stop evolving.
