The world's biggest user of 3D printers is not Apple or Boeing, it is the company behind perfect teeth and the scale is staggering

If you were asked to name which company does the most 3D printing, you’d probably guess a tech giant, like Apple, or maybe an aerospace company, like Boeing – but you’d be wrong. 

The concept of 3D printing has been around since the 1950s, and these days the tech has become cheap enough that almost anyone can give it a go, if they want to. 

Today, it’s used across a bunch of different industries, from car making to healthcare. 

And when it comes to who does the most printing, one company is ahead ‘by far’.

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The company uses 3D printers to help create perfect smiles

3D printing technology is big business in manufacturing and is used by some of the world’s largest and most successful companies. 

Align Technology, the company behind Invisalign, is one of them – in fact, it’s the most prolific 3D printing user out there. 

In a recent interview with Wired, CEO Joe Hogan revealed that the company had 2.6 million cases last year alone, which adds up to a whole lot of aligners – and 3D printing is an integral part of the process for Align Technology. 

Hogan believes that the company’s ability to scale up its production with the help of 3D printing has been the key to its success. 

“We were the first ones to what I call mass customization, to be able to 3D print a million different aligners a day,” he told Wired. 

But getting to that point ‘took years’ and involved the team modifying printing tech to make it work for them. 

“We had to take 3D printing equipment and modify it massively because most 3D printing was a prototype business at that point in time,” he added.

When asked if Align Technology was ‘probably the largest user of 3D printing machines,’ Hogan said there was no ‘probably’ about it – and they were ‘by far’ the biggest user.

This was confirmed by two experts who agreed that Align prints more parts in-house than any other company.

And it seems as though it won’t be losing the title any time soon

Currently, Align Technology doesn’t print its aligners; instead, it uses the tech to create molds. 

However, Hogan told Wired that the company was gearing up to start directly printing its aligners, which would streamline the process and, of course, mean a lot of printing. 

The CEO said it had ‘bothered [him] to death’ that he wasn’t able to directly print the aligners, so he worked with a polymer chemist to come up with a ‘breakthrough’ material. 

Once up and running, the new system will be responsible for printing a million aligners per day, which should mean that Align Technology holds it place as the biggest user of 3D printing in the world.

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