Categories
networking

Atlantis Plus 2025

Advanced Manufacturing Meetup

This year’s meetup is on Thursday, Jan 30, 2025 from 4-7pm at Legal Sea Foods- Harborside.

The City of Boston is home to manufacturing companies. In fact, it leads the list of manufacturing jobs (13,843) per municipality for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Here’s a list of the state’s largest manufacturing businesses:

Source: industryselect.com

The Atlantis Plus meetup coincides with the Yankee Dental Congress. It was once said: “Dental is the poster child of 3D printing”. Check out the Exhibition and then meetup with other professionals from the dental, 3d printing, automation, and robotics industries.

Categories
programming

Kaleidocycle

A kaleidocycle rotates about itself.

Source: https://kaleidocycle.metatooth.com

Categories
3d-printing

Formlabs User Summit 2024

Metatooth tuned into this year’s Formlabs User Summit last week. There was a fun keynote with CEO Max Lobovsky and YouTuber Matt Stanton. Stanton trained as an aerospace engineer, but now entertains 1.4M subscribers with his creative content.

Here are some topics that caught our attention. Don’t take our word for it! Watch the entire summit here.

Dental Industry Update

The update was primarily a review of the new Form 4B. The Form 4 generation of machines are MSLA instead of SLA technology. The difference being Masked SLA uses an LED array to cure an entire layer at once, as opposed to SLA relying on a single laser that must be moved across the platform.

The result is faster print times, Formlabs claims 11 dental models in 9 minutes with 99% of print surface within +/-100 microns. Updated resins for fast model production are needed to achieve these speed & accuracy improvements.

Resins for temporary and permanent restorations continue to improve, in strength and aesthetics. In particular, a resin from BEGO was highlighted, indicated for permanent single and multi-unit crowns.

Software

New PreForm features of particular use to dental products fabrication were reviewed. PreForm functionality continues to expand so that users can complete all steps of file preparation. It’s not just for slicing!

For dental models in particular, PreForm provides the ability to produce hollow or honeycombed models. Vent or drain holes can now be applied. Labeling, either embossed or engraved can be completed using the PreForm software.

In the “coming soon” department, native CAD file import is on its way. CATIA, Creo, SolidWorks, and STEP were listed. CAD file conversion used to be an industry in itself! PreForm still uses a mesh-based model internally, it will be interesting to learn customer response to PreForm’s approach to meshing from boundary representations.

Developer Tools

The discussion of the Formlabs Web & Local API should spark the interest of those needing to integrate their fleet of printers with other software.

The Web API requires a connection to the Internet and enables communication of the data rendered by the Formlabs Dashboard to workflow management or so-called Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software. Many companies use Google Sheets as their MES! This sort of integration… from Web API to Google Sheets was demonstrated. Lean manufacturing requires visibility of each work unit and Google Sheets is far better than other desktop-bound systems.

The Local API works completely on-premises which is certainly of interest to users with HIPAA or ITAR constraints. It was suggested that developers could create their own dashboards using data retrieved from the Local API. This is another example of tech developed for cloud-native systems providing benefits in a “local only” setting.

The Local API is not just for reporting printer fleet state! While the PreForm application continues to expand it’s capabilities, certain manufacturers may need to adjust print settings dyanamicaly, or apply geometrical changes that PreForm does not support. Using the Local API, a “post-preform” layer can be developed so that users can make use of proprietary methods in their print preparation workflow.

Did you watch this year’s summit? Tell us about it in the comments!

Categories
marketresearch

Yankee Dental 2024

Aligners

Orthosnap claims greatest accuracy and clearest material in the aligner tray space. They show shortened treatment times from their own trials. Treatment planning software included too.

Invisalign is a proper noun. It’s hard to imagine the brand will be dislodged from popular culture for some time. For example, my children’s orthodontist seems to be doing very well using Invisalign (and brackets as a backup). That being said, the Align Technology stock price has come back down to pre-pandemic levels.

It’s really hard to have success twice. Align Technology has expanded it’s capabilities with acquisition of iTero & exocad. Can they add another lane outside of orthodontics?

Regenerative

Waste not want not. Tooth Transformer is an Italian company that enables extracted teeth to be reused as a regenerative material. The transformer is a desktop machine.

Intraoral Scanners

Here are the systems that caught our attention, in order of price (ascending).

Runyes 3DS

Shining 3D

Medit i600

iTero (Cart)

Practice Management Software

There was a lot of it, at all price points. New companies keep appearing! This space will remain fragmented, but driven by trends in DSO acquisitions. DSOs could apply pressure on vendors for interoperability and electronic health records.

Artificial Intelligence

Here is the one area where the dental industry leads all others. While most consumers learned about AI with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the dental industry has been adopting AI tools for over a decade.

Carries detection is making inroads at dental practices, driven by DSOs (see above!) Restorative design is also having it’s AI moment, most noticeably 3Shape Automate service. Marketing tools like chatbots and patient retention systems are increasingly being driven by AI.

What else can AI handle in the digital dentistry workflow? Tell us about it in the comments!

Categories
networking

Atlantis Plus 2024

This year’s 3rd annual meetup is on Thursday, Jan 25, 2024 from 4-7pm at Legal Sea Foods- Harborside. Does your work improve oral health? Please join us!

  1. A networking event as unique as the dental industry.

2. Boston is a dental technology star.

3. Seafood tower.

Greater Boston is a home to startup culture. Cascade Communications, Digital Equipment Corporation, DraftKings, HubSpot, Tripadvisor, and Wayfair all got their starts here. This event is named for dental startup Atlantis Components. After acquisition the Atlantis business has grown to serve markets in North America, Europe, and Japan.

The business created by Atlantis Components, Inc (1997-2007) is owned by Dentsply Sirona (NASDAQ:XRAY).

Please reserve a ticket for the event here.

Sponsors welcome! Contact atlantisplus24@metatooth.com for rates.

Categories
marketresearch

Customers are…

Mill Town Agriculture is renovating and repurposing the Riverside Paper Co. building in Holyoke, MA for cannabis cultivation. An exciting project and Metatooth is grateful to be involved.

One fascinating aspect is the remnants left behind by previous tenants. Lots of old equipment, plenty of useful scrap, workplace posters and signs. This poster caught our attention immediately. A little heavy-handed but definitely not wrong.

Customer-centered or outward-looking reflection is a vital part of any business, regardless of industry. Identifying your customer and their needs are essential in understanding what to offer and how to sell. What is their need? It is not always what they say. Many customers can’t articulate their need as they don’t know how your product or service provides value. In regulated markets, a customer need document — also known as user need — is the beginning of the product development process. Contact us to learn about Metatooth’s consulting services.

Categories
cannabis

Lynn Grown

Low-THC Cannabis grown in the City of Firsts.

Metatooth LLC is licensed to produce and process industrial hemp by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. Contact info@lynngrown.com for license details or product certificates. Premium flower and solvent-less extracts will be for sale through the state’s Marijuana Retailers.

COMING SOON…
New London Gold (CBG)

Sign-up at https://lynngrown.com to receive updates on availability and product samples.

Categories
marketresearch

Yankee Dental 2022

The Congress and Exhibition returned in-person this year after going virtual for 2021. There were a few empty booths on Friday ahead of the nor’easter and the Congress was closed on Saturday because of the weather. The target customer for this exhibition is the clinician and other members of a dental practice.

New Products

These were new to Metatooth, if not the world.

First up is the Virtua Vivo intraoral scanner from Straumann. It gets the form factor right. Are the days of the dedicated cart over? Also on display were handsets from 3Shape and Medit.

Bioclear demonstrated it’s restorative method, which has been around since 2007. This observer is more familiar with prosthetic dentistry, but patient care is a spectrum. The clinician selects a form or matrix from a kit of stock components (sound familiar?) and then uses injection molding techniques to apply and set the restorative material. The procedure takes about one hour. If an optical scan was taken beforehand, a custom matrix could provide value to the clinician and patient.

Practice Management Software

A survey of software vendors that interface with practice management software consider the following as the market leaders.

Dental Laboratory Services

Ten or so dental labs had a presence at the exhibition. Many of the “traditional” labs had samples on display, for example, study models, crowns, splints. A smaller number focused their displays on technology — equipment and services. Newcomer Dandy was enticing practitioners with a free intraoral scanner. This business had up-to-date marketing and was drawing the largest interest from the floor.

In-house Production

This author has heard estimates that 10% of dental practices employ a lab technician. If so, then in-house or chair-side production is a small but important market segment. Formlabs seemed to be drawing more interest than it’s competitors in 3D printing equipment.

Artificial Intelligence

Articial Intelligence (AI) increases it’s presence in this industry. The most common application is radiographic analysis, offered by Pearl and Overjet. Claims analysis for insurance companies appears to be another use case.

Looking for products delivered using AI technology? Then 3D Predict has clear aligners for you.

Some other eye catchers…

Wesper presented an FDA-cleared device for at-home sleep testing. It feels like we are just starting to see what mobile computers and wearable devices can deliver in the dental space.

Software provider Referral Ease reminded this author of a time when the conventional wisdom was that web-based software was considered “too modern” for that era’s dentists.

At a recent cleaning, the author’s hygienist described the difficulty of periodontal charting with enhanced infection protocols. Florida Probe has the solution.

Thank you, Nancy

This banner for Rosen Summit Dental caught our attention. A good reminder that at the end of the day dental practices are businesses where the bottom-line remains priority one. This small business owner knows that revenue enables everything else to happen.

What did you see at Yankee Dental this year? Tell us about it in the comments!

Categories
product

Grow Herbert

Herbert is an automation platform for horticulture.

Herbert provides environmental control for the amateur horticulturalist. Indoor gardening is just one possible application. The platform connects off-the-shelf devices with zone management and profiling tools.

Herbert supports monitoring, remote access, and control of your indoor grow with mobile-first interfaces and multiple control strategies. Back-end services may be hosted in the cloud or on-premises.

Sign-up at https://growherbert.com to receive information on upcoming releases including hardware kits.

Categories
devops

WordPress on Linode

After using Heroku for a WordPress installation (here and here), Metatooth’s next WordPress installation is running on Linode. Metatooth had been using AWS and Heroku for cloud hosting, the economic conditions of the pandemic made for a budgetary decision. In addition, experiencing the impact of an AWS failure on a business dependent on compute availability, and a desire to not further enrich Jeff Bezos, led to this change.

It always pays to start at the beginning! The desired outcome was  Setting Up Multiple WordPress Sites with LXD Containers. The very helpful “Before You Begin” section on each Guide led all the way back to Getting Started with Linode. For this author, the key understanding came when reading A Beginner’s Guide to LXD. After a couple false starts, voila!

tgl@electra:~$ lxc list -c ns4t
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
|  NAME  |  STATE  |         IPV4         |   TYPE    |
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
| db     | RUNNING | 10.88.102.185 (eth0) | CONTAINER |
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
| nginx1 | RUNNING | 10.88.102.96 (eth0)  | CONTAINER |
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
| nginx2 | RUNNING | 10.88.102.112 (eth0) | CONTAINER |
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
| proxy  | RUNNING | 10.88.102.42 (eth0)  | CONTAINER |
+--------+---------+----------------------+-----------+
tgl@electra:~$

The nginx1 container provides https://electra.growherbert.com and nginx2 provides https://growherbert.com.  One stumbling point was that the listen directive for each proxied nginx container must specify both “ssl” and “proxy_protocol”. For example:

ubuntu@proxy:~$ cat /etc/nginx/sites-available/electra.growherbert.com 
server {
	listen 80 proxy_protocol;
        listen [::]:80 proxy_protocol;

        server_name electra.growherbert.com;

        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
        listen 443 ssl proxy_protocol;
 
        server_name electra.growherbert.com;

        ssl_certificate /root/.acme.sh/growherbert.com/fullchain.cer;
        ssl_certificate_key /root/.acme.sh/growherbert.com/growherbert.com.key;

        location / {
                include /etc/nginx/proxy_params;

                proxy_pass http://nginx1.lxd;
        }

        real_ip_header proxy_protocol;
        set_real_ip_from 127.0.0.1;
}
ubuntu@proxy:~$

Lastly was the need to switch DNS providers in order to make use of acme.sh in the proxy container. There was even a helpful Guide for using this script —Secure a Website or Domain with Let’s Encrypt and acme.sh. Switching was easy using Linode’s Domain Manager.

What are you doing with LXD Containers? Tell us about it in the comments!