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8 INDUSTRY Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition | 6/2017 Middle East’s First Metal 3D Printed Surgical Guide Dental 3D printing specialist, Sinterex, is now producing metal surgical guides with completely open structures By Dental Tribune MEA / CAPPmea niques to digital production, then they do not go back. Back in May 2017, we interviewed Julian Callanan, the Managing Direc- tor of Sinterex, and discussed how he and his business were applying metal 3D printing technology in dentistry. We caught up with him to find out his progress and the latest products. DTMEA/CAPPmea: How have the last 6 months passed by? Julian Callanan: The last 6 months have absolutely flown by. As a young business, we are on a con- stant roller-coaster ride with highs and lows combined with lots of learning. The summer in particular was quite tough, I know many clinics and laboratories found market con- ditions to be more quiet than usual, but things seem to be moving again now. Overall, we keep adding new customers, and once they convert from the traditional manual tech- Are you working on any new products or technologies? Our primary product line remains PFM crowns and bridges. However, since we last met, we have intro- duced two new products: Removable Partial Dentures and Metal Surgical Guides. The RPDs which we produce are a great solution for a partially edentulous patient who is not a can- didate clinically or financially for im- plants. We use a metallurgical pro- cess called Solution Annealing which brings flexibility into our metal and helps with the fit for the patient. The second product is a metal 3D printed Surgical Guide. This is a really excit- ing innovation in Surgical Guides and we recently collaborated on a tri- al surgery to test the product in the Middle East region for the first time. The open design of the guide gives great visibility and allows cooling The metal 3D printed surgical guide which is sterilised before use International team of collaborators: Dr Ahmad Aljazairi, Dr Philippe De Moyer, Dr Islam Samy, Dr Khaled Al-Ekram and Julian Callanan Who was involved and what did you do? We worked with a broad team of den- tal experts. The design of the guide and the planning of the operation was led by 2INGIS, a Belgium based company who holds many patents in this area. The operation was led by Dr. Ahmad Aljazairi with support from Dr. Islam Samy and Dr. Khaled Al-Ekram. The role of Sinterex was to metal 3D print and then finish the guide. What was the outcome? The patient had two missing teeth and one broken tooth. During the operation the broken tooth was re- moved, and three implants immedi- ately placed. We checked the results after the operation using a CBCT and the implant placement was perfect, more importantly, the patient was happy. The patient had needed the operation for a while but was avoid- ing as he was worried about the pro- cedure. The patient works as a mi- croelectronic technician and is very technically minded, when he heard that a surgical guide would be used, his confidence in the procedure in- creased. What lies ahead for Sinterex? We are focusing now on expanding our customer base and bringing our products to new markets. In parallel we are also looking at some really cool new 3D printing technologies which we feel could be beneficial to our existing customers.