CAD/CAM dental milling machine vs 5 axis cnc

I'm a dentist and I want to know the difference between dental milling machine CAD/CAM and normal 5 axis CNC milling machines
Can I used the 5 axis CNC instead of dental milling machine

Hi Ahmd - Yes you can but finding a suitable 5 axis machine is tough. I've recently had implants and watched the technician scan my head then build the implant in my jaw etc etc. very specific and specialist software. I think in your case you had better investigate the available software and hardware. General purpose solutions will be very labour intensive (and requires highly skilled cad/cam people) to generate all that data, surfaces, geometry, toolpaths etc. Whereas the specialist SW does this quite quickly. I understand its expensive but then if you need it, it's a business case and you do the math on the repayments... Would you build your own Xray machine? Peter

Isn't the size of the work envelope another aspect of the question?The average dental machining project is pretty small even though the principles are exactly the same.

Hi Routalot - The machine is nearly trivial. It's the software to make the workflow efficient that's the catch. Scanning, CAM and toolpathing....This is specialised work that needs to be done very fast that's what the software does and that's the cost. The cost of using general purpose solutions would be huge due to the time it takes to do all the processing. Its doable but probably uneconomic. Peter