Recently, we upgraded our Cerec crown milling machine, intra-oral scanner, and oven! Isn’t that awesome?!
I’m sure you are thinking, yes—awesome, what does that even mean?
It means that you can get your crowns taken care of all in ONE DAY!
For the last few years, we have mostly been sending our crowns to a dental lab, so our patients have had to wait a few weeks with a temporary crown before coming back to have their permanent crown placed. Our previous Cerec machine had become a little outdated and was limited in which materials we could use with it, so the best option for longevity was to have a dental lab make the crown.
Of course, while these were fantastic crowns, this isn’t the most convenient, particularly for patients who travel a long way to our office or who are nervous in the dental chair! This is a big reason why we decided to invest in our patient’s experience with the latest same-day crown technology. Your appointment will be a little bit longer than a lab crown, but you don’t have to come back or worry about a temporary—I’d call that more convenient.
The other very cool thing about this technology is the new scanner—instead of using impression materials that we squish onto your teeth, we use a little camera to scan the area. It takes incredibly accurate images and the scanner and mill’s software helps us to automatically detect the margins of the crown and design your new crown perfectly.
After Dr. Andrew preps your tooth and scans it, he and our dental assistants design the crown and send it over to the mill (just in the hallway by the front desk—we’ll show it to you if you want to see!). We put a block of cubic zirconia or porcelain, or whatever the best material is for your tooth and your needs in, and the mill precisely carves the crown to the custom specifications from the digital impression and Dr. Andrew’s design. A couple minutes later, the mill is done making your crown, and we fire it in the oven located in the lab. It “cooks” your crown to harden those materials—it comes out of the oven looking a little bit red (because its very hot) and it cools down to that nice white tooth color. The last steps are to cement the crown in and adjust the tooth to fit well with the rest of your teeth!
Dental technology is constantly changing and evolving, and Dr. Andrew loves to research and discover what is coming up next in the dental world. If it benefits our patients, you can bet that he is curious about it and considering it for our office!
(Dr. Andrew wants me to tell you that not all dental crowns are a good fit for same-day crowns….so even though we have the tech to do same day crowns, sometimes, we’ll still recommend a lab crown.)
