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+35% production capacity, same staff |
4 hrs → 30 min manual labor per denture |
5 → 3 patient appointments |
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⅓ less chair time per case |
Up to 40 dentures printed in one job |
5 new external customers gained |
Traditional denture production at the lab relied on decades of hand craftsmanship: plaster models, hand-set teeth in wax, and clasps bent by hand. Understandably, this process took significant time, materials, and required, above all, skilled people.
“In the past, we produced full dentures traditionally,” recalls Lehmann, “which took a great deal of time.
Skilled labor was quickly becoming the laboratory's scarcest resource. Experienced technicians were retiring, and the craftsmanship-based knowledge behind consistent, aesthetic dentures was becoming increasingly difficult to replace.
“The resource we had the least of is the person who builds the denture,” Lehmann explains. “So digitalization was the only path for us."
The lab needed a way to preserve the quality patients expected while reducing its dependency on scarce manual labor. It needed to do so without sacrificing the aesthetics that traditional technicians had spent careers perfecting.
Zahnklinik Mühldorf am Inn built its digital denture workflow around two Stratasys J5 DentaJet® printers and TrueDent® material, adopted in October 2025. The lab now produces one-piece, monolithic dentures using 3D printing, from an intraoral scan through to a finished, aesthetic prosthesis, rather than assembling separate denture teeth and bases.
“TrueDent was really the first material we saw that came anywhere close to where we had been before with analog technology,” says Lehmann.
“You naturally have one product, not two products that have to be joined together,” Lehmann points out. “Therefore, the manufacturing process is much smarter for us, much faster.”
Before making the decision, the lab compared the TrueDent workflow to milled dentures and milled denture bases, other 3D-printing systems and materials, and outsourced manufacturing providers.
According to Lehmann, the decision to standardize on the J5 DentaJet with TrueDent, came down to five factors:
One of the key findings from this digital denture workflow case study is the ability to add production capacity without adding staff. Since standardizing with the J5 and TrueDent, the Zahnklinik laboratory has increased its output of full and partial dentures without adding headcount, a critical outcome given the industry-wide shortage of skilled dental technicians.
“Because we have this scalability, we experienced an increase in production of around 35%,” Lehmann notes, “especially in full dentures and partial dentures, where we used to often have stress factors because of time.”
That added capacity has translated into concrete production growth: monthly TrueDent denture output has grown from under 50 per month before adoption to up to 100 per month today, and partial denture volume has grown from under 25 to up to 50 per month.
Of course, the shift hasn't eliminated the need for people, but it has redistributed their time. Because the total amount of manual work required has dropped substantially, the same team is able to produce significantly more.
The clearest efficiency gain is in hands-on technician time. A complete denture that once required approximately 4 hours of manual task time now requires no more than 30 minutes of manual, machine-assisted post-processing, freeing technicians to focus on higher-value work.
According to Lehmann, “TrueDent changed us in that we became significantly faster and much more efficient in production. Everything became more plannable, everything became more reproducible.”
“It was such a breakthrough because we cut our process in half,” he adds, “which represents an enormous improvement in many other resources.
That efficiency didn't happen overnight. Remake rates were initially higher during the lab's testing and implementation phase; today, they're back in line with pre-TrueDent levels.
Lehmann points to the elimination of manual assembly as a quality improvement as well as a speed advantage. Fewer manual steps means fewer opportunities for error.
“From the basal surface of a denture all the way to the occlusal surface, the error rate is significantly minimized and reduced as much as possible,” he adds.
Running two Stratasys J5 DentaJet printers, the lab now batches production at a scale that would have been impossible with hand-built dentures. They typically print up to 40 dentures in a single job, with total denture output across all types now exceeding 40 units a week. For the lab, printing that many dentures at once, overnight instead of one at a time has changed the picture entirely.
Model-based steps have started to disappear too: some jobs now move from digital impression straight to production without a physical model ever being made, and scans arrive by email instead of by courier.
This digital denture workflow case study also highlights the clinical impact of digitalization, including fewer patient appointments and reduced chair time. Treatment appointments have dropped from five visits to only three, comprised of a scan appointment, a try-in appointment, and final delivery. Chair time per case is now roughly one-third shorter.
Lehmann observes that “the lab was suddenly much better able to respond to patient wishes.”
The digital workflow has also made it possible to advise patients virtually before physical production ever begins, helping them visualize and get comfortable with their new denture ahead of time. Lehmann cites simple, high-impact examples of this new responsiveness, such as reprinting a denture in a lighter shade for a patient before a summer vacation, something that would not have been practical under the traditional workflow.
The newfound capacity gave the lab room to take on new business. As Lehmann explains, “the whole thing enabled us to suddenly have room for external production as well, meaning customers we may not have had on our radar before and whom we would not have been able to serve.”
The lab now supports about ten external clinics in addition to its affiliated clinic, and TrueDent specifically has contributed to the acquisition of approximately five new customers to date. Additional opportunities in new application areas are in development and the lab is building an online store to make it easier for outside practices and laboratories to submit production orders. This early customer growth points to continued meaningful upside.
This digital denture workflow case study demonstrates how digitalization can improve efficiency, scalability, and patient experience without compromising quality. Meanwhile, Lehmann is already looking ahead to what’s next. He expects future workflows to draw more directly on patient-specific data, from condylar path inclination to occlusal design, to produce dentures that are increasingly individualized and lifelike.
He predicts that, “in the future, through digitalization, we will be able to build our dentures more and more intelligently. We will be able to produce dentures for patients that address their needs much, much better than we could with traditional methods.
