Objectives: To investigate the influence of material and printing orientation on wear resistance and flexural properties of one low force SLA- and two DLP-printed splint materials and to compare these 3D-printed splints to a subtractively manufactured splint material.
Methods: Two DLP-printed (V-Print splint, LuxaPrint Ortho Plus) and one low force SLA-printed (Dental LT Clear) material, where specimens were printed in three printing orientations (0°, 45°, 90°), were investigated. In addition, one milled splint material (Zirlux Splint Transparent) was examined. A total of 160 specimens were produced for both test series. The two-body wear test was performed in a chewing simulator (80'000 cycles at 50 N with 5-55 °C thermocycling). Steatite balls were used as antagonists. The wear pattern was analyzed with a 3D digital microscope in terms of maximum vertical intrusion depth (mm) and total volume loss (mm³). The flexural properties were investigated by three-point bending in accordance with ISO 20795-1: 2013 (denture base polymers). The flexural strength (MPa) and the flexural modulus (MPa) were measured. Two-way ANOVA was performed to investigate the effects of the two independent variables material and printing orientation for the three 3D-printed materials. The comparison of the printing orientations within one material was carried out with one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey tests.
Results: Two-way ANOVA revealed that wear and flexural properties are highly dependent on the 3D-printed material (p < 0.001). Across groups, a significant effect was observed for wear depth (p = 0.031) and wear volume (p = 0.044) with regard to printing orientation but this was not found for flexural strength (p = 0.080) and flexural modulus (p = 0.136). One-way ANOVA showed that both DLP-printed groups showed no significant differences within the printing orientations in terms of wear and flexural properties. Dental LT Clear showed that 90° oriented specimens had higher flexural strength than 0° oriented ones (p < 0.001) and 45° oriented specimens also showed higher values than 0° ones (p = 0.038). No significant differences were observed within the printing orientations for flexural modulus and wear behaviour within this group. T-tests showed that the milled splints exhibited statistically higher wear resistance and flexural properties compared to all three 3D-printed splint materials (p < 0.001) and that highly significant differences were found between the 3D-printed splint materials for both test series.
Conclusion: Within the limitations of this in vitro study, it can be stated that wear behaviour and flexural properties are highly dependent on the 3D-printed material itself. Currently, milled splints exhibit higher wear resistance and flexural properties compared to 3D-printed splint materials. The printing orientation has a minor influence on the properties investigated. Nevertheless, two-way ANOVA also showed a significant influence of printing orientation in the wear test across groups and one-way ANOVA detected significant effects for SLA material in terms of flexural strength, with printing in 90° showing the highest flexural strength. Therefore, anisotropy was found in SLA material, but it can be limited with the employed printing parameters. Both DLP-printed materials showed no significant difference within the printing orientation.
Keywords: 3D printing; DLP; Flexural strength; Printing orientation; SLA; Splints; Two-body wear.
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