Can anybody recommend a 3D printer to print dental models. precision has to be reasonably high. Would like to teeth to be well duplicated. Also any scanner suggestions ?
This is not a very good application for FDM machines. I would look at some of the DLP resin printers.
Thank you ! The idea is to scan the mouth , print it in some form if a resin and them make a retainer over it.
Ideally I would like to design the retainer without printing the model. If there is a way to do that … Design it on a CAd- cam software and minus the teeth model. That way the only thing that will print is the polyethylene plastic retainer .
How do we talk offline ? I just added you to my circle … Sorry still trying to figure G hangouts 
As @Whosa_whatsis noted, FDM machines will not be well suited for this application (at least not in the near term). A very long time ago I made dental impression molds and tried my hand at retainers. The FDM printers will have some issues printing the minute detail needed to provide an accurate representation of the patients mouth as well as the acrylic will pick-up the edges of the print layers.
There could also be strength issues with the printed model depending on the material and method used to print it.
Compared to the existing cost of making a model, I think you’ll find that a 3D printed model will be much higher due to you needed to use a much higher quality, SLA type printer.
There’s no doubt that this is worth exploring as you should stay on the cutting edge, but I think this will be costlier than current methods.
Objet type printers can be an alternative high quality methods to creating the molds which are then used to cast solid parts with poured resins.
You won’t find a machine that can directly print the retainer. There’s multiple reasons behind it. As far as I understand, all the retainers that are made using 3D printing in the process are poured from a 3D printed mold as @Joseph_Chiu said. As others have said, an FDM machine will not be suitable for this application. There are some SLA machines available as DIY/Pro-sumer solutions that could but they do take some work and have a learning curve. In a dental office you likely aren’t interested in learning all the intricacies of 3D printing so you should look into something that is more turn key such as the Objet or a 3D Systems machine. They are expensive but I believe a dental office is a place where they would really pay off. Envisiontech offers some machines that are cheaper but my impression is that they still require a bit of learning to use them.
The Objet machines and the 3D Systems’ polyjet equivalents probably have the smallest learning curve. 3D systems true SLA machines would be next with a fairly small learning curve. Polyjet machines print their parts on a waxy support material that is easily scraped off and then pressure washed followed by a soaking in NaOH. Leaving a very smooth and highly detailed model untouched. True SLA machines will build small support structures that attach the part ot the base. These have to be trimmed off of the model. This can take some learning to get right. If you do go the SLA route I recommend looking into Materialise’s Magics and e-Stage softwares. Either way Magics or 3Matic (described as CAD for STL files) may be useful for working with the scan data.
Is it Objet or one of the others that already makes a model supposedly optimized for dental practices? It’s been a year or two since I saw the ads and talked to a couple people who had been to a dentist who had one.
@paul_wallich I forgot that Objet makes Dental and biocompatible materials: http://www.stratasys.com/materials/polyjet/dental-material
http://www.stratasys.com/materials/polyjet/bio-compatible
I believe they will only sell these materials to customers with machines dedicated solely to those materials.
Also probably useful: http://www.stratasys.com/industries/dental#objet30-orthodesk