Stereolithography-fabricated zirconia dental prostheses: concerns based on clinical requirements

Abstract

With the recent rapid development of the additive manufacturing family of technologies, the interest in application potential of stereolithography on producing ceramic dental prostheses has aroused and been widely discussed. While someone claimed the birth of ‘stereolithography-fabricated ceramic dental prostheses’, an overall evaluation based on the clinical requirements is lacking, making the optimism a kind of unrealistic. In this article, the prototypes of ceramic dental prostheses and standard specimens produced by the ceramic stereolithography approach are compared with those made by the classic subtractive manufacturing method by following the critical clinical requirements. Concerns on the upcoming challenges and future improvement towards clinical applications are presented that include productivity, delivery time, dimensional tolerance, mechanical and aesthetic properties. It is concluded that it is far too early to call ‘stereolithography-fabricated ceramic dental prostheses’ as a success as usable and competitive products for clinical applications.