# Nesting Inlays and Onlays: Tips and Techniques
## Introduction
[0] Alright. The first thing that we're gonna get into when it comes to teaching you how to nest is inlays and onlays because these can be tricky. These are something that I oftentimes do same day, so there's no room for error. You wanna make sure it prints successfully on the very first try. So I'm gonna give you tips and tricks, and I'm gonna do that in Rayware Cloud, understanding that the rules that I'm gonna teach you apply to any other nesting software universally.
## Setting Up in Rayware Cloud
[25] And so the first thing that I'm gonna go through is how I would set this up in Rayware cloud. So I'm gonna go to my Rayware here. I logged in to my account, and I'm gonna go to new print job. The first thing I'm gonna do is load a file that contains some of the test cases that we're gonna be doing in this course together. So I'm gonna go to my computer. I'm gonna go to my downloads here, and let's go ahead and load a simple inlay.
[55] Let's go ahead and load an onlay as well. So I'm just gonna let's see. So let's see. We loaded an onlay, and then I'm gonna go over here and hit add file. And from my computer, I'm gonna load my inlay, and then I'm gonna load one more. Let's see. Another inlay. So we've got kind of a quadrant of an onlay and two inlays together.
## Configuring Print Settings
[99] So these three files. Now let's go through my settings here. I'm gonna go ahead and hit crown and bridge. Let's put it on the Pro two Arch Kit ceramic crown. And under my advanced settings, we're gonna do a hundred micron layer height. That's what I recommend for all inlays and onlays. And look, I have everything on here. Mesh repair, auto supports, orientation, and layout.
[121] I'm gonna go ahead and hit prepare print. We'll go ahead and do this for the pro two with the arch kit, and then we'll also repeat this with the Midas and see how they differ. So the software is going to attempt to auto orientate these and load them in. And with any AI software, what you're gonna find is that the software is good, but it's not as good as a well-trained human being.
## Evaluating and Editing Proposals
[150] And so my job here today is to teach you how to look at these and objectively evaluate the proposal to see how we need to edit it for printing success. Now if you look at the nesting guide and if you look at kind of the way that I teach the most predictable way to nest these, it is exactly how Rayware orientated this onlay with the occlusal surface down.
[172] And so if I rotate underneath here and I go ahead and go to my supports and I go to balance and add remove individual supports. And you look at what it did for this online. It did a beautiful job nesting this. However, there's a few little spots that I wanna edit. For example, you see how there's three support points all clustered together in the same spot on the central pit?
## Fine-Tuning Support Placement
[200] And, honestly, we only need one right there. And then all these along the border are really good. We want at least one on each cusp tip and marginal ridge and then along the border here. So that looks good. I'm gonna add one right there, and that would be a perfect way to nest this occlusal surface down.
[218] So I'm gonna go ahead and hit confirm there. That is beautiful. That is gonna be a very accurate print. And one thing that you wanna notice is that all the cost tips are supported. The marginal registers are supported, and along this marginal border here is supported.
## Creative Nesting Techniques
[232] So then we get over to this inlay over here, and we could see Raywear is trying to give us a a beautiful occlusal anatomy where we don't have any finishing to do on the occlusal surface. And that's that's fine. But in as a general rule, I find that if you wanna most particularly print these, you're gonna rotate occlusal surface down. We'll do that for both of these.
[253] Just like that. And hit confirm changes and see what the proposal is here. And that actually looks amazing. Let's go ahead and just give it a little look by going to supports and hit one of these restorations and go to add or move individual supports. And again, what I'm looking for is an adequate pattern of distribution of supports along my margin line here and here with one on each marginal ridge and then typically one in the central groove.
## Advanced Nesting with Midas
[290] And so I think this would be probably a better way to support this and avoiding duplicated supports that are touching one another. So I like that. I might just, for good luck, add one right there. And you might be saying, well, this looks just like a lot of supports making it very difficult to clean. And you'd be kinda mistaken there because these just peel right off and are very easy to clean.
[305] Not a big deal. And so let's go ahead with this one, do the same thing. And see we have some clusters here. So, again, one on each Marshall Ridge. And then how many do you need at a border? Well, as a general rule, you don't want supports touching each other, and you want them evenly spaced apart like that. That's gonna be a beautiful print.
## Conclusion
[331] You probably won't ever see margins this good in your life from a from a milled system if you print like this. And so this would be kind of the standard workflow for occlusal surface down as described in the textbook. Now, we could get a little bit more creative here with this particular printer with the Pro two. In addition, we could get more creative, especially if we jump to the Midas printer.
[350] So let me show you some more creative ways to nest these that will minimize finishing of the final restorations. And so to do that, I'm gonna show you in the Midas how I would do that. So I'm gonna go to actually back to my setup, and I'm gonna change from Pro two to Midas. And I'm gonna hit save. It's going to attempt to auto layout these and nest them for the Midas, and let's see how it does.
[379] And it remembered my original, nesting. It didn't change that. It just kinda put them on the Midas build plate. So here's one thing that's super cool with the Midas. The peel forces are a little bit different than on a standard printer because it's all on one enclosed system. And so I find that I could get away with a lot. With that said, you don't wanna fail have a failed print on a Midas because the capsules are of more significant cost than, say, a normal printer, and so we we want both reliability and creativity here.
[407] And so one thing that I'm gonna say is I could actually, for this inlay, rotate. And if you look at the nesting guide, you have to consider an MOD inlay as like a staple in shape. And what you're looking for here is you wanna rotate to where not perfectly vertical to where you have a bit like this, where you have a big overhang on this on this, contralateral box. So let me just drag this over here so you guys can see.
[436] So, if we look at this and I go to my supports, look at the area right here that's all red. Basically, because of the way that we angled this on this build plate, the box here is unsupported, meaning that it's gonna slump and just distort, meaning, this will be a perfect fit here, but your whole box form here is gonna be open, probably short of the margin. So this is not a good way to nest this, although we're getting close.
[468] Let me show you what you could do. So if I go to orientation here and I just rotate this a little bit, in such a way to where the contralateral box form is not perfectly overhung from the intaglio surface, but rather gradually, sloped. You could get a much more safe way to nest this with almost no finishing on the actual fitting surface. Check this out. So this would be a beautiful way to nest this inlay right here.
[504] Slightly, cantilevered, but not more than, just about 20 degrees to the build plate here with this angle. And here, we could see this angle right here as we described in the nesting guide is very gentle of an angle there, not 90 degrees. It's more like a 10 plus degree slope, meaning that we could just break these little supports off the proximal surface and polish them for three seconds and have the most gorgeous occlusal anatomy and predictable proximal contacts as well because these little needle-like supports would just peel off and polish in a second.
[531] So this is my preferred way to nest inlays. So let's go back now. We got a beautiful nesting there. Let's go back to this onlay, very complicated onlay. Let's see if there's a way to creatively nest this in such a way that we have no occlusal finishing to do. So typically, what I try to do is look for the biggest buccal or lingual surface and rotate to that surface and see.
[555] So I'm gonna rotate here, and then I'm gonna rotate here like this, and hit confirm. And let's take a look and see if there's anywhere that's severely overhanging. And it looks like we just have a little bit on this margin here. So taking that into consideration, I'm now gonna go to my orientation. And let's see if we could just kind of change the angle of this slope right here like that.
[588] I actually really like that. Let's look and see if we could do even better. There is a possibility where we could go straight lingual like this, and then probably rotate just a little bit like, maybe just a little bit back this way and hit confirm. Let's see what that looks like. I'm gonna show you because, again, you wanna minimize occlusal supports on functional surfaces and marginal areas. This actually looks pretty beautiful.
[622] Let's go to supports and add remove individual supports and see, let's click it. I would probably add one more right there, and that actually looks really good. It's showing a slight overhang here. I'm gonna probably just add a few right along that border because I don't wanna risk failure. I actually love that. That's a really creative way to nest that.
[649] And let me just drag it right here. That's gonna be super successful. And also we look at things like, how do we get more restorations on the same build plate to save resin and material costs? I'm gonna try to get all three of these on the same plate. So that's looking good. And things that I'm looking for are any kind of overhang areas that are looking unsupported. It looks really good.
[674] So now we're back to this inlay. Let's look and see. I will tell you guys, sometimes this this is a a perfect occlusal inlay with no box forms. That they could be difficult to nest. And, actually, I'm gonna tell you, I like to sometimes actually nest these creatively. Like, let's look at it like this, big surface down, and put a few supports on the intaglio surface rather than my occlusal surface.
[701] Maybe I'm gonna just rotate that just a little bit more. Let's take a look at this. Okay. So now I'm seeing a little bit of a overhang here. So let's look at supports. Click that. Add row of individual individual supports. Let's see. I'm probably gonna get rid of this cluster and just spread them out like that. Maybe one all the way there.
[740] Okay. So then what you would do, you would you would pop those off and just ever so slightly smooth those little bumps to make sure this could seat. So this is one way to support this. There's another way which is the smaller side down like that. And that actually looks really good. Let me go to supports. Click on this. Add, remove individual supports. I might add two there.
[769] And to prevent this from debonding or delaminating from the build plate, I'm gonna add at least three right there. And then I'm gonna drag this little guy and see if I could fit him right there. Perfect. Seven minute print time for those three restorations. Now I have noticed that Rayware is getting really good at kinda thinking creatively like this where you don't have to manually do it as often, and and it remembers it learns from all of my nestings.
[801] And so it's it's doing some cool creative stuff. You'll notice it, like, might rotate something odd. You'd be like, what? What is that doing? Well, it's trying to minimize finishing for you. So look at this. I think this would be a phenomenal way to nest these three things. As long as you're comfortable finishing a little bit of the intact lube. Remember, these are resin based restorations, and so we're bonding them in with resin based composites, and it's all gonna become one monoblock.
[817] The main thing is that your margins are sealed and beautiful, and your anatomy is exactly the way you designed it. So that's kinda how I would nest on the Midas.
