The 1-Hour Chairside Dental Temporary Workflow

Delivering high-quality temporary crowns or bridges traditionally required messy impressions, lab wait times, or bulky, expensive chairside milling machines. By integrating an open LCD/MSLA 3D printer with the Mini4Speed mini-plate and mini-vat ecosystem, clinicians can dramatically slash printing time.

Because the mini-plate drastically minimizes suction forces and layer-peel resistance, you can crank up lifting and retract speeds up to 400–600 mm/s. This allows you to hand a patient a highly accurate, aesthetic temporary restoration in about 60 minutes.  

Here is how the streamlined, step-by-step chairside workflow comes together:

Step 1: Digital Impression (5 Mins)

• Action: Prep the tooth and capture the patient's upper arch, lower arch, and bite configuration using an intraoral scanner (IOS).  

  
  

• Why it's fast: It eliminates physical putty trays and disinfection wait times, generating a perfect 3D digital model instantly.

Step 2: CAD Design (15 Mins)

• Action: Import the scan data into chairside CAD software (e.g., exocad, 3Shape, or automated AI design tools). Design the temporary crown or bridge to match the patient’s natural occlusion and morphology.

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• Why it's fast: AI-assisted design software can now generate a highly accurate margin line and crown anatomy in just a few clicks. Export the final design as an STL file.

Step 3: Nesting & Slicing (3 Mins)

• Action: Drop the STL file into your 3D printer's CAM slicing software. Orient the temporary restoration (ideally tilting it to reduce support footprint) and slice the file.  

  
  

• Why it's fast: Since you are printing on a Mini4Speed plate, you can optimize your slicer settings with shorter Z-lift distances and ultra-fast retraction speeds without risking a print failure.  

  
  

Step 4: Rapid 3D Printing with Mini4Speed (25–35 Mins)

• Action: Pour a small amount of biocompatible temporary crown and bridge resin (e.g., BEGO VarseoSmile, Detax Freeprint Temp) into the Mini4Speed mini-vat, snap the mini-plate into place, and press start.

• Why it's fast: Traditional full-sized vats require the machine to lift slowly to overcome heavy suction forces. The Mini4Speed system uses a localized, low-volume architecture that limits resin displacement. This cuts mechanical printing time by up to 30% to 50%, completing a crown in under 30 minutes.  

Step 5: Post-Processing & Curing (10 Mins)

• Action: Pop the mini-plate off, remove the temporary from the platform, and submerge it in an isopropyl alcohol (IPA) bath (or an automated washer) for a quick 3-minute rinse. Snip off the supports, dry it, and place it into a rapid post-curing light box to fully polymerize the biocompatible resin.

• Why it's fast: Mini4Speed’s localized setup means less excess resin clings to the plate, making wash cycles much faster and keeping the workspace significantly cleaner.

Step 6: Finishing & Delivery (10 Mins)

• Action: Give the temporary restoration a quick pass with a polishing wheel or apply a light-cured characterization glaze for natural aesthetics. Try it in the patient's mouth, check the margins and occlusion, and cement it with temporary cement.  

Feature	Traditional Large Vat Printing	Mini4Speed Chairside System
Resin Volume Required	High (must fill the baseline of a massive vat)	Minimal (optimized for single-unit or small-batch prints)
Suction Force & Strain	Heavy (requires slow Z-axis lift speeds)	Extremely Low (enables ultra-fast lift/retract speeds)
Material Switching	Painful, wasteful, and time-consuming	Rapid (takes seconds to clean or swap mini-vats)
Average Print Time	50–70 minutes	25–35 minutes

By shaving critical minutes off the print cycle and simplifying the cleanup, the Mini4Speed ecosystem turns 3D printing into a truly viable, single-visit chairside solution. Patients walk out an hour later with a beautiful, durable temporary, and your clinic frees up a chair.