Articles about dental materials and technology led the way, again, in 2021—no surprise at all. Our readers were anxious to learn more about digital dentures, milling machines, and 3D printers. As usual, 

’ Materials Survey was among the most read articles of the year.

With products always being our focus, it also should not be a surprise to learn that 2 of the more popular articles on the website this year were new product slide shows from the magazine. Additionally, dentures and a technique on competing a denture base also made the top 10 list for 2021.

Articles

The top 10 articles published in Dental Lab Products® in 2021.

Top 10 DLP Articles 

Jerri James, CDT, a dental technician at CenTex Dental Lab in Waco, Texas, can hardly remember a time before Wonderfill. Hard-pressed to say exactly how long she’s been using it in her lab, she can’t imagine going back to how things were before.

“We’ve been using it for at least 10 years,” she says. “I’m not really sure how long, because it’s just made the years since we began using it so much more streamlined. I would never go back to before.”

Priding herself on the quality of her work, James has found Wonderfill to be a reliable way to create perfect, well-fitting finished products. Premixed and easy to form, Wonderfill acts as a quick-use tongue-and-void filler that saves labs time and money, by quickly and easily creating more accurate and better-looking models—a huge departure from the days of alginate tongue fillers or plaster and stone models without a filler. Although Wonderfill can also be used for bleaching trays, James primarily uses it as a void filler for the lower tongue area and to fill in bubbles, air pockets, undercuts, and spaces left by missing teeth.

“The big benefit is we aren’t doing the old boxing method for models,” James says. “Wonderfill blocks out all undercuts and makes a neater-looking model. It’s a complete turnaround from the years past. When I went to lab school to learn how to box a model, we didn’t have all this. All we had was boxing models with wax—and this is definitely the way to go over that.”

With the boxing technique, which required extra steps such as pouring wax, James found the process took 20 to 30 minutes. With Wonderfill, she says it takes maybe 5 minutes to get it prepped and ready to pour. After a lower impression is taken, the tongue area is filled with Wonderfill. Once the plaster is poured and set, Wonderfill is easily removed for a clean, generally residue-free model.

“Residue depends a bit on the consistency,” James says. “Occasionally, you’ll get a situation where it sticks to the model, but not very often. [Dental Creations] finally has it perfected where it rarely does. But, in the off chance it does, it is water soluble so it washes right off perfectly—no matter what.”

This also means less of a mess. There’s no messy alginate tongue filler to mix and clean up, and technicians won’t be faced with the dust caused by grinding out stone, as Wonderfill eliminates the need for both of those methods.

“It’s too easy not to use,” James says. “It’s less mess, because you don’t have the big cleanup that you would when you pour a regular model or are boxing a model.”


Another benefit James touts is Wonderfill’s cost-effectiveness. In addition to being inexpensive, James says, Wonderfill is reusable, should technicians want to reuse it. Because it comes premixed and has a long shelf life, a little bit can go a long way, which is especially important when a lab uses it as much as James does.

“To me, it’s a perfect add,” she says. “When we go out to doctor’s offices [for] a job there, we take a bucket of it with us so we have it there to use. We wouldn’t go without it.”

Overall, James is hard-pressed to come up with any Wonderfill shortcomings. She’s had a great experience with not only the product but also with Dental Creations, and she says the company is easy to work with and simple to get a hold of. For labs that haven’t used Wonderfill yet, James has 1 piece of advice.

“They need to try it,” she says. “Once they try it, they’ll see it makes your product look so much nicer. It makes a better-looking product to send back to the doctor’s office. We care about what we send out, so we want our product to look nice. Wonderfill just makes a world of difference.”

How Wonderfill has changed one technician’s approach to model making. 

The Wonderfill Difference

Creating anatomically correct and esthetically pleasing dentition requires careful, precise work and attention to detail. Equally important is a technician’s choice of materials, as that can affect strength and esthetics. This is why it is crucial for dental lab technicians to know and understand the properties of a wide variety of the different materials available to them. Here are our top 10 editor’s choice materials for 2021.

Top 10 Editor's Choice Materials 2021

The top new material products of 2021 as chosen by the editors of Dental Lab Products®.

Top 10  Editor’s Choice Materials

The dental lab ecosystem encountered both challenges and triumphs during the past year, including dealing with an ongoing pandemic and navigating new technologies to best serve practices and patients. New 3D printers, software, and implant solutions are just some of the news stories we covered this past year in 

 as part of our regular coverage. Lab owners, technicians, and professionals found great value in the news shared on our website. Here is a look at the top 10 

Top 10 DLP News

The top 10 Dental Lab Products® news items from 2021.

Top 10 Dental Lab Products News Items

A new era of CAD and digital processing has changed the dental restorative landscape forever. This evolution will have far-reaching effects on the industry and lab owners and technicians alike must stay vigilant to navigate these uncharted waters.

Long gone are the days of asking, “What should we adopt?” The modern question has now evolved into, “How should we adapt?” Unfortunately, this question does not dig deep enough to truly uncover the potential danger as well as amazing opportunities that lie within technology itself.

In the past, suppliers introduced new restorative materials to clinicians not only through marketing, but also through dental laboratory partners. By effectively utilizing dental technicians and their clinician relationships, these corporations were able to drive new and innovative products to the clinical customer base. Through this strategy these suppliers were able to create internationally recognized brands like Ivoclar Vivadent’s IPS e.max, Nobel Biocare’s Procera Alumina and 3M’s LAVA Zirconia.

Today, these companies not only continue to develop new materials but now also supply the equipment and software needed to produce these prosthetics. The progressive dental laboratory now has the same ability to design proprietary products that was previously only available to large corporations.

Creating prosthetics through digital design has now become an industry standard and having the ability to creatively manage the data is the way of the future!

Only a decade ago a wax-knife or porcelain brush was seen as the ultimate creative instrument. Today, digital design has taken over as the artistic instrument of choice and the computer has replaced most of the diagnostic tools historically used by technicians.

The technician of the future’s success depends on their ability to create new products from data and understand the capabilities of the powerful software programs at their disposal.


Digital prototyping is arguably the biggest advancement in the processing workflow of a full-arch hybrid or more complex restorative case. The advantage of prototyping (

) is that the suggested digital diagnostic can be accurately transferred to the patient’s mouth for approval. Because of this technology, the patient can wear a trial prosthesis. This appliance is archived with a digital design file that will be used for the final prosthetic processing. After required adjustments (reductive and/or additive) are made directly to the prototype intraorally, the device is redigitized and ultimately used for the final prosthetic design (


Hand processing and reductive fabrication

To produce an effective prototype, these temporary prosthetics must be lifelike. Analog fabrication of these devices requires high artistic ability and large amounts of hands-on skill, making this a labor-intensive interim procedure. With labor shortages in the industry predicted to worsen, technology must be utilized to reduce the amount of hand processing required to produce these devices.

The culprits causing most of this arduous hand processing can be attributed to the reductive fabrication process. Gingival contouring further complicates the process, especially in FP2 or FP3 style restorations (


Unfortunately, off-the-shelf design software, such as 3Shape or exocad, even though pioneers in the dental design arena, does not yet offer adequate design freedom to process these types of complex custom prosthetics. It is therefore important to find innovative solutions with workarounds and software switching. STL file management allows for very advanced design processes, giving today’s technician the ability to create prosthetics not currently seen as possible.


Innovative materials and additive fabrication

With the recent launch of products such as FlexceraSmile and BEGO Varseo, tooth structures can now be printed instead of milled. Ultimately, printing a tooth structure is significantly faster than milling. A full arch unit requires, on average, 3.5 to 4 hours of milling time, whereas printing the same arch requires 2 to 2.5 hours. Although printing times are on average 40% faster than milling, the true advantage of printing is only seen when multiple arches are processed at the same time. Utilizing a printer like the EnvisionTEC or Formlabs Form 3B, the operator can nest 8 to 12 full arches on a printing plate, and processing time for a fully nested tray, is on average 4.5 to 5 hours. This makes additive technology scalable and a clear favorite over reductive processing.

The biggest benefit of additive technology is the accuracy with which the structures are produced. Final processing of a milled PMMA full arch requires on average 45 to 60 minutes of skilled hand processing, while final processing a printed arch only requires 15 to 20 minutes. Because the structure is printed at 50-micron accuracy, additive technology has no limitations when printing into an undercut is needed. Therefore, printed structures produced with addictive technology require only minimal hand finishing and, in many cases, can be polished without further contouring (

STL File Manipulation and Software Integration

) was processed using the 3Shape crown and bridge module. In the order form, the first file was set up as a full upper restoration with an additional bridge in the posterior. This split design allowed our Absolute Digital Team (absolutedentallab.com) to select 2 different tooth libraries within 3Shape. Once designed, the STL files were imported into a secondary software to allow for intaglio fitting surface cut-out (

). This ultimately left the team with 2 STL files ready for printing. The first STL file represents the tooth structure (

) and the second file represents the base with intaglio seating surfaces.


The dental industry is starting to see exponential improvements in additive material development, and many of these new world options are now cleared for long-term intraoral use. As with all product development, these polymer-based options will only become more functional and even stronger with time. One inherent material property of polymer-glass is the material’s ability to re-create lifelike esthetics without the need for external staining.

) is now printed with a denture base polymer like Flexcera Base Resin on an EnvisionTEC printing platform or Lucitone 3D Denture Base Resin printed on a Carbon DLP platform.

These base materials are extremely strong, and with a Flexural Modulus of over 2100 J/m² at room temperature and over 3200 J/m² at body temperature, these materials are leading the way into a very exciting future.

Technology is driven by need and need is created by a demand for simpler processing, faster fabrication, better strength and esthetics, and ultimately, more innovative products.

The future is about innovation and dental technicians of the future will be defined by their inventions. Let’s be innovators.

The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of: Mark Ludlow, DMD and Jeffrey Ganeles, DMD, restorative and surgical pictures. Digital design processes and software management by Absolute digital team, Drew VanAarde and Steve Lombardi. Technical artistry by Absolutes Signature ART team, in Durham, North Carolina, under the leadership of Jack Marrano.

Technology is creating a demand for simpler processing, faster fabrication, better strength and esthetics, and ultimately more innovative products.

How To Make Digital Processing the Key to Innovation 

Dental Lab Products 2022 Innovation Guide

Dental lab professionals share a look back at the past year and look ahead to what’s in store for the dental lab industry in 2022.

Most dental labs today look a lot different from what they did a decade ago, considering all the innovations that have taken place in the equipment and technology that power a lab’s production of dental restorations. This year alone we saw a number of breakthrough product launches in the field of dental technology, many designed to impact the ever-growing digital dental workflow. Here are 10 of the most exciting innovations in lab technology from 2021.

The top new dental laboratory technology products of 2021 as chosen by the Dental Lab Products® editorial team.

Top 10 Editor’s Choice Lab Technologies

new products debuted over the previous 12 months in 

increase in the number of dental lab technician jobs is projected between 2020 and 2030, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections program. This increase is expected to mean opportunities for up to 4000 additional dental lab technicians over the next decade.1

of dental labs use some form of magnification while working, and 55% of labs strongly agree that magnification provides a strong return on investment, whereas 62% of labs agree or strongly agree that using magnification makes a strong impression on clients and can help drive new business. Source: 

toothbrushes were used to create Fastminar, a 45-ft-tall statue of a tooth created at Terna Dental College in Navi Mumbai, India, which received a Guinness World Records title as the largest toothbrush sculpture of a body part (supported). The toothbrushes used in the statue were donated by 8890 dentists from throughout India. Source: Guinness World Records

of dental labs said enhanced esthetics and enhanced durability are important or very important when considering a new material for use in the lab, whereas just 44% rate access to free samples of new materials in those same categories. Source: 

is the big anniversary GC Corporation marked in February 2021. The company celebrated its first century throughout the year.

is the average age of a dental lab technician, according to job site Zippia. However, 59% of technicians fall into the 40 and older category, demonstrating the continued need to recruit and train new technicians.

Dental and ophthalmic laboratory technicians and medical appliance technicians. US Department of Labor Statistics. Updated September 13, 2021. Accessed November 12, 2021. 

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/dental-and-ophthalmic-laboratory-technicians-and-medical-appliance-technicians.htm

A look back at some metrics from the dental lab industry in 2021.

Dental Lab Products December 2021