How Synergy 3D Sets Up For Growth With Form 4BL, Form 4B, and Open Material Mode

Synergy 3D is a full-service dental lab with a heavy emphasis on digital dentistry workflows and supporting dental customers in adopting digital data collection. Located in Wappingers Falls, New York, but serving the entire United States, Synergy 3D has been able to achieve the following thanks to their focus on digital workflows: 

• A three to five day turnaround on restorations compared to the industry average of two weeks 

• The same output as an analog lab, even with half the staff

• Fewer remakes and more predictability 

• Half the appointments for dentists delivering dentures and overdentures

In order to meet throughput and quality standards, Synergy 3D requires accurate, reliable 3D printers. For 15 years, Milos Markovic, Vice President of CAD/CAM and Implantology, has put 3D printers from many manufacturers through their paces, selecting the best printers to meet Synergy 3D’s exacting requirements. Currently, the majority of those printers are Formlabs Form 4B and Form 4BL stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers.

At one point, Synergy 3D had 3D printers from Carbon, Heygears, and EnvisionTEC 3D printers alongside Form 2 and Form 3 3D printers. But in the last two years they’ve redone the room, replacing these printers with Form 3Bs, Form 4B, three Form 4BLs, plus a RapidShape and an Origin Two. 

When it comes to selecting printers, Markovic says reliability is top of mind. “We have all our printers in the same room. So it's very easy to see which ones are successful and which ones are failing.”

“Since we're doing hundreds of models a day,  it's really easy to break in the machine within the first week or a month to really see how reliable it is. If I throw 2,500 models at my machine over 15 days, it's going to give me a pretty reasonable picture of how reliable it is,” says Markovic. This reliability is necessary in order to deliver the volume of cases in the three to five days Synergy 3D promises.

Predictability comes down not just to the reliability of a printer accurately delivering what’s in a build, but also the workflow. Markovic gives an example of an assembly line where 10 people are touching a product; if there’s an issue, it could’ve come from any of those 10 people. But if only three people touch a product in the digital workflow, it’s much easier on a mass-production scale to diagnose the issue.

Automated post-processing solutions Form Wash and Form Cure help to ensure a predictable process, with preset washing times, automatic lifting of parts out of the wash when the cycle completes, and presets for post-curing in Form Cure. Having both fewer steps in a digital process and automated solutions makes consistency easier.

Talk to any dental professional about 3D printing and they’ll mention speed. Five years ago, Markovic says that speed was the most important factor, but since then, the speed gap between technologies has closed. “Most printers are now within a reasonable time frame,” he says. Due to this, and the high throughput required by Synergy 3D, reliability is the most important metric, followed by speed. Even if one 3D printer is slightly faster, if it breaks or needs servicing, this is downtime when it can’t be utilized, meaning the overall throughput is less. For this reason, Markovic relies on printers like Form 4B, which were shown to have 99% reliability in third-party testing.

As of late 2025, Synergy 3D averages between 100 and 200 cases per day, from single quadrants to full cases (upper and lower models), 98% of which are printed on Formlabs 3D printers. Occasional special requests might include 2,500 sets (5,000 models) in 20 days. 

Reliable, scalable production is the only way to deliver this volume, especially with the precision and quality required of restorative dental models.

“There's different types of dental stone, different purity, different strengths, but no matter what, the expansion of plaster fluctuates based on water and environmental conditions. So a ton of variation is introduced before production on the case even begins,” says Markovic. In contrast, digital methods are highly precise, without the fluctuations caused by environmental conditions.

Highly precise models translate to fewer remakes, and fewer appointments as appliances and restorations have a perfect fit.

Synergy 3D works with clinicians, laying the groundwork to ensure best practices are followed during digital data collection and helping clinicians shift from impressions to digital workflows.  “On the clinician side, it just saves them a ton of time, which in their case, time is literally money,” says Markovic. “They can book more patients within a day, or see that patient less.”  

Building streamlined digital workflows has enabled Synergy 3D to help their customers cut denture and overdenture appointments from five to six down to two or three. Additionally, the time savings of digital model production enables the delivery of cases to clinics in three to five days, versus the two weeks that are the industry average. 

Open Material Mode (OMM) enables users of Formlabs resin printers to print with any 405 nm resin, expanding the number of resins that can be printed. Markovic cautions against 3D printers that are not open, saying, “If you lock yourself in a system, even if a new resin comes along, you can't use it on that particular printer. So you have to buy another printer and jump into another ecosystem to use that resin.” 

Synergy 3D prefers using Lucitone for 3D printing denture bases as the material behaves like a traditional denture in the sense that it can be serviced and repaired like an acrylic denture — important for clinicians who need to be able to service dentures for at least five years for insurance purposes. 

The main problem facing Synergy 3D was that only a few printers that supported Lucitone, and those that did were very expensive. But, with OMM on Form 4B, Synergy 3D had a cost-effective solution for printing Lucitone.

He adds, “What gave us further excitement is after we actually printed a couple of those Lucitone dentures, we realized that they actually printed faster than some of the DLP solutions, which is insane.” 

Lucitone Denture Bases

By 3D printing dentures bases, Synergy 3D is saving close to two days of production per denture since they are cutting out pouring impressions, a setup, try in, and then boiling out, packing acrylic, and finishing — all multiplied by about 20 dentures a day. 

In the next five years, as the baby boomer generation fully retires, the demand for dentures is going to increase, and Synergy 3D is set to scale to meet the growing demands. Part of this is producing overdentures in two or three appointments versus five or six, giving clinicians an additional option for patients.

As Synergy 3D continues to scale, so, too, will their Form 4B and Form 4BL printer fleet. 

Explore Formlabs 3D printers to learn more or contact a reseller to start printing. To evaluate the quality of Formlabs for yourself, request a free sample part.