Made possible by the Infrastructure and Efficiency Funding (IEF) for scarce skills received from the Department of Higher Education and Training, upgrades and refurbishment amounting to R20 million were undertaken by the dental technology division, enabling TUT to deliver world-class graduates and address the shortage of skilled professionals in this sector.
The renovations included equipping the new laboratories with the most modern equipment available as well as the refurbishment of the dental laboratories, plaster rooms, machine and casting rooms, student workstations and diagnostic facilities. The new equipment enables students to enhance their practical skills on the best innovative technical equipment currently available.
The new computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) system includes 17 linked workstations. This will greatly enhance the training aspect in relation to the design and creation of dental restorations, more specifically dental prostheses, including crowns, crown lays, veneers, inlays, fixed bridges, dental implant restorations, dentures and orthodontic appliances.
Other new equipment includes state of the art phaser welders that, based on pulsed micro arc technology, are optimised for easy, fast and reliable welding of all types of dental welding jobs. Furthermore, new furnaces, milling stations, electro polishers and induction casting machines are just some of the equipment that can be seen in the new laboratories that now consists of over 110 brand new lab benches and individual student training stations.
New Smart-classroom capabilities will enable lecturers to not only do practical demonstrations that students follow on high definition big screens, but also share them with fellow students and lecturers in adjacent or distant laboratories. This innovative approach makes the new facilities an interactive experience simulating the current dental workplace. All demonstrations, lectures and practical work can also be recorded in high definition and uploaded to a server, making it possible for students to review work again or catch up on classes they might have missed.
