ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In the case of tooth defect or missing, the treatment should be achieved by making a personalized prosthesis. Traditional manufacturing process is time-consuming, costly and accurate. After the introduction of 3D printing technology into dental manufacture, the manufacturing efficiency and quality can be improved to a certain extent. OBJECTIVE: To introduce the application of 3D printing technology in dental manufacture, discuss the bottleneck in recent application, and guide the development of 3D printing technology in dental manufacture. METHODS: The authors used the search times "3D printing, metal implant, dental manufacturing, dental restorations” to search Web of Science, Wanfang, CNKI databases in English and Chinese separately to search papers published during 1980-2019. 261 papers were preliminarily retrieved and 60 of them were included in the final analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: 3D printing dental mold, digital implant guide plate and wax pattern have been widely used in dental manufacture. 3D printing technology has been widely used in dental manufacture. The most widely used six processes are stereo lithography appearance, laminated object manufacturing, fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, selective laser melting, and inkjet printing. There are some technical bottlenecks in the application of 3D printing technology in the field of dental manufacturing. After breaking through technology bottlenecks, 3D printing will be more useful in the field of dental manufacturing in the future.