PRINT ALIGNERS IN-HOUSE
"Making aligners in-house cut my lab bill in half and saved me thousands"
About Us
AlignerDesign provides every service you need to get you making your own aligners
Providing clear aligners is a great practice builder… but lab bills can be astronomical, adding up to tens of thousands in a year! Making aligners in-house lets you do it for a fraction of the costs. AlignerDesign is here to help you with whatever you need to start in-housing your aligners. From consulting services to help get you set up, to digital design services to make the data files for you, we’re here to help!
Why make aligners in-house?
Making your own aligners provides all sorts of benefits!
- They cost one-half to one-tenth as much
- You can make as many aligners as you want (in case a tray gets lost or damaged)
- Aligners and retainers can be made in a single day, shortening your turn-around time
How much does it cost?
The raw materials cost under $5 per tray. Equipment varies more broadly, but is about the same as the lab fees associated with just a handful of aligner cases.
How do you make aligners in-house?
There are four main steps to making aligners
- Take an intra-oral scan
- Design the aligners on a computer
- 3D print the models
- Thermoform and trim the aligners
With our consulting services, we can help you get this entire process set up. All of these procedures, except for step 2, is easy to standardize and delegate. If you find you want some help with step 2, we provide digital design services to make the data files for you!
How does treatment planning differ?
Making your own aligners provides you with the ability to tweak plans as you go! Generally, you plan 2-3 months in advance. Then, take an update scan, and modify your plans as you.
If you want to use our design services, short cases are planned entirely at the beginning. If you’d like the flexibility to modify treatment as you go, check out our comprehensive packages!
How long does it take to make aligners?
Intra-oral scans can be done in 5-10 minutes. 3D printing takes about 5 minutes to set up, and then runs on its own. Thermoforming and trimming each tray takes about 15 minutes.
The most time-consuming portion is designing the aligners. A more complicated case can take up to an hour to design. Thats where AlignerDesign comes in; send the cases to us so you dont have to spend your precious time on digital design!
Services
Consulting
Need help getting started? We offer consulting services to help you get set up, improve efficiency, or with training.
Some things to think about:
- Your equipment needs
- How to use and train others with that equipment
- What materials to use
- How to transfer, upload, and use files
- How to make the aligners themselves
Contact us to discuss what your needs are. For the basics, we don’t charge anything. For more complicated consultations, we’ll send a quote so you know what you’re getting into.
Digital Design
Making your own appliances is a fairly straight-forward process. But the computer designing portion has a bit of a learning curve and can be time consuming. If you dont want to spend your time digitally designing the appliances, let us do it!
Aligners
Send us a scan and prescription, and we will design a series of aligners to fulfill your treatment plan. We’ll send back a video for patient presentation, as well as all the file types you need. Simply transfer the files to your printer and start printing!
Retainers
Submit an intra-oral scan and we will design a model that you can make retainers off of. The benefit of making your own models is that you can make as many retainers as you like!
Study Models
We can digitally trim your scans to produce clean study models. In contrast to the retainer models, we trim these models in a way to preserve as much soft tissue anatomy as possible.
Why us?
Fast Service
We typically turn-around study models and retainers in two business days and aligner cases within a week.
Doctor Supervision
All of our cases are reviewed and approved by active dentists in the USA and Canada.
Low Fees
Our fees are lower than our major competitors. In some cases, we're less than half!