Clear Aligner Design: Pain Points of Traditional Manual Workflow
Traditional manual clear aligner design has three core pain points:
Low efficiency & heavy workload: A single case takes 1–4 hours of manual work with mainstream software. An 8-hour workday only allows 4–6 cases, and medium-sized labs need 35–40 full-time technicians for 1,000 monthly cases. Technicians also face intense cognitive burden, leading to fluctuating work quality over long hours.
High labor costs: Labor accounts for 60%–80% of total production expenses. Each manual case costs $80–$200 in labor, far exceeding software licensing fees. Only solutions that drastically cut manual time can greatly optimize overall costs.
Unstable design quality: Experienced technicians disagree on tooth positioning for 15%–25% of teeth, with larger gaps in complex cases, causing inconsistent treatment results. Standardized AI trained on large datasets can deliver consistent planning, yet it remains to be verified if current AI tools adopt real data training or just preset rules.
