Collaboration with Solidscape, Inc.

Summary: Dental labs look at automated mass customization and large-scale production of castable dental forms from 3D data with a new integrated solution and easy-to-use interface between 3Shape CAMbridge® software and Solidscape® 3D Printers.

Copenhagen, June 19th 2009 - 3Shape A/S, an innovative leader in 3D scanners and CAD/CAM dental solutions, has joined forces with Solidscape®, Inc., the leading worldwide producer of 3D printers for modelmaking, to offer dental labs fully automatic preparation and generation of directly castable dental forms.

3Shape and Solidscape engineers have collaborated to design a seamless integration of Solidscape's ModelWorks™ printing setup software with the 3Shape CAMbridge® software. The result is a powerful, yet intuitive software interface for serving up digital data from 3Shape's CAMbridge® software dental system to any of Solidscape's 3D dental printers:

«With Solidscape's precision, the results are outstanding,» says Fabio Esposito, VP Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Solidscape®, Inc. «Joining these technologies puts an extremely powerful tool into the hands of the dental laboratory.»

The integration-solution within 3Shape CAMbridge® allows users to select «Solidscape» as the output device, automatically and visually arrange and orient the restorations, add labels, select output resolution, choose which specific Solidscape 3D printer will run the job and then transmit the 3D digital data to that machine. Once the correct parameters are selected, all subsequent jobs may be setup automatically by applying the user-defined presets, making this the perfect solution for large-scale production. The user-friendly interface, combined with the software's high level of automation and the printer's efficiency, enable operators at any technical level to run a streamlined production, bringing mass customization to small and mid-sized labs alike.

«At 3Shape we take usability very seriously,» says David Fischer, Project Manager for 3Shape CAMbridge®. «We built a new Configuration Wizard into 3Shape CAMbridge® to guide users through driver installation and connection to the relevant Solidscape device. Now setup and daily operations are reduced to a few clicks,» he explains.

The open architecture philosophy supported by both 3Shape and Solidscape® Inc. is what makes such combined solutions possible and opens new horizons for dental laboratories.