New lathe brings smiles all round for dental machining 

An experienced prosthodontist, specialising in pioneering practical and cost-effective solutions, Dr Hart has made a name for himself as an innovator and leader in his profession. After earning his Bachelor of Dental Science from the University of Melbourne, he built up his expertise in a variety of patient care environments by working as a dentist.

After gaining his Master of Dental Science degree, he was selected to be part of an international team of implantology scholars, an accolade that took him to the University of Bern in Switzerland, where he was mentored by world-renowned faculty member Professor Daniel Buser at the university’s dental medicine clinic.

Upon returning to Australia, and working in both private practice and hospital settings, Dr Hart discovered that he couldn’t find adequate prostheses to serve the functional needs of oncology patients, so he decided to make the parts himself. He started his company PartMaker describing himself as “an engineer trapped in a dentist’s body”.

He says: “Before we started making our own parts, we were heavily modifying existing ones. That means we were basically butchering really well-made parts in order to remedy simple problems, like patients not being able to open their mouths wide enough to accommodate available screwdrivers.”

Dr Hart never intended to buy a lathe but he discovered that the dental implants and maxillofacial hardware he needed to produce were beyond the capabilities of simple milling machines.

“With so many dental parts being too long or too short, and with existing systems going in and out of fashion, I really saw a need for bespoke, custom dental and biomedical parts,” he says.

The implants require turned parts, so among PartMaker’s early purchases were a Tornos ENC 264 4-axis lathe and a Tornos Delta 20.

“Being new to Swiss-type turning and CNC machining as a whole, we had a pretty small wish list of parts to make,” Dr Hart says. “Peter Staebner at Tornos’ agent SwissTec Australia was instrumental in helping me get our first few parts made with the Delta 20.”

Before too long, Dr Hart saw that Tornos’ Swiss-type technology opened up a whole world of possibilities. Even running the Delta 20 all day, PartMaker was limited in the parts it could produce.

This is where the ergonomic Swiss GT13, offering easy access to all tool positions and designed to drive successful production of long and short parts was a success.

“It has six linear axes, so it allows us to make some parts that we can’t produce on the Delta 20, and we can use 99% of our existing programming with the new machine,” he explains. “The Swiss GT 13 is so much easier to use than our old machine.”

Accommodating up to 30 tools, including 12 rotating tools, the Swiss GT13 has a Y-axis that significantly increases machining capability in secondary operations and allows some complex workpieces to be produced without reworking. The new machine is slashing PartMaker’s cycle times on many parts simply because of the additional access it provides.

“It’s easier to set up and its cycle times are significantly faster,” Dr Hart affirms. “In fact, because of the easier access, we are saving 40% in cycle time on a lot of parts. We are not using the GT13 to its fullest capabilities yet, but that’s the goal. It’s already optimising our manufacturing. Now that we have two machines running, our ability to keep on top of orders is significantly improved.”

Dr Hart is also impressed with Tornos Tisis communication and programming software.

He states: “With Tisis, it’s a lot easier to generate programs for our parts because we are really just assembling programming modules. The software is easy to use and I estimate that it is saving us 50% in time spent on programming because we are not writing a new program for every part produced.”

For one machining task he says the new Tornos does an “amazing job”. The part is a dental abutment featuring a complex taper geometry, external threading and a milled octagon. The component, with its M1.4 thread to a depth of 4mm through a 1.2mm by 1.5mm deep hexagon is easily executed with the addition of the Swiss GT13. In fact, PartMaker has become so productive with its Swiss GT13 that Dr Hart has ordered an optional bar feeder.

He concludes: “I have a dream for PartMaker to end up with six Tornos lathes and four milling machines. Half our customers are international, from the US, Canada, Taiwan and Mexico and with the increasing uptake of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing in dentistry, dentists are realising what possibilities are available from dental implant companies. Therefore we know the potential for more custom machining is out there.”

Tornos www.tornos.com