Case Study: Phonak achieves mass-customized, faster, more comfortable hearing aids with Materialise

How Personalization Has Changed the Hearing Aid Industry for the Better

Phonak, now part of Sonova, faced a labor‑intensive, artisan‑dependent process for producing custom hearing‑aid shells that often required extensive manual retouching to achieve a comfortable fit. In 2000 Phonak partnered with Materialise to digitize that workflow, tapping Materialise’s software development and 3D‑printing capabilities — including RSM for rapid modeling and Magics for build preparation — to create a scalable, repeatable production process.

Materialise and Phonak co‑created an end‑to‑end digital workflow in which impressions are scanned, a digital model is generated in as little as six minutes, shells are optimized and batch‑printed, then finished and fitted with electronics. The result — powered by Materialise technology — is faster, more accurate, acoustically optimized, nearly invisible custom hearing aids; the method now produces about 99% of the world’s hearing aids, has helped over 10 million people, and allows quick replacement production from stored digital files.

Phonak