The invention relates to a process for the production of a dental prosthetic item (10) by means of local sintering, in which the dental prosthetic item (10) is produced layer-wise by energy input, by means of an energy transferring beam (7), into a layer of powder (6) of a sinterable material. One or more parameters of the sintering process are modified during production such that the material (6) is regionally sintered to various degrees to produce denser material in the marginal region (14) of a sintered layer of said dental prosthetic item (10) than is produced in the inner region (15) of said sintered layer.