Very good video as an introduction.



For the past several months, I've been using the UERM whose impressions have been 3D scanned. To date, the UERM is the best-fitting monitor I've used, and my right ear is terribly difficult to fit correctly.



Having also been to UE's facilities and been up close with the UE people, I definitely expect them to have spent a lot of time fine-tuning their standard operating procedures to be as consistent as possible. Using the 3D scanning/printing process allows them to continue on that path.



The main drawback of using 3D printing for fabricating shells is that UE will now be defaulting to clear shells for all users, except for special requests, where the traditional method will still be used. Hopefully what they're doing is still printing the finished impression and creating the negative colloid from the 3D-printed impression to create the final UV hand-cured shells.



One hurdle that I'd like to see UE take on as a challenge is to create demo units that fit better and more comfortably on a greater number of people, as most demo units are simply not very practical to wear, and run into issues of variable insertion depth across clientele, etc. UE, over the years, has amassed a huge collection of ear impressions that they've kept on file. These impressions can in turn be re-scanned and catalogued to form a very large library of ear impressions that can be statistically analyzed for optimal average fit. In fact, they could take things a step further and begin keeping metadata on a client's gender, height, weight, build, ethnicity, facial shape, etc. to further fine tune shapes for different markets. I know such an effort is already widespread in the hearing aid industry, and it is this kind of data that most universal in-ear manufacturers consult when designing their products, but with their own in-house equipment on hand, UE can tailor these information sets to their own needs.

