REFRACTORY FELDSPATHIC VENEERS: INTEGRATION BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL WORKFLOW

Shared by CreaMED team, The Excellence srl dental clinic, Mdt. Giuseppe Vallarelli.

Digitalization of dental production protocol is one of the most common topic among dental professionals, who start to actually see their laboratory or clinic become more and more virtual.

At the moment there are too much perplexity towards this “drastic” but unavoidable change. Now digitization in fact is involving almost all dental companies but there is skepticism about the real precision of this kind of products.

Understandable are doubts of who has consolidated his own activity in years making medical devices by their hands. Today with digitalization the physical contact with the prosthetic teeth is becoming virtual.

“The scanner reproduces carefully details and edges like the plaster? We can have distortion or inaccuracy in the digital workflow?”

We receive this kind of questions daily.

This study case realized thanks to the collaboration of Dental Laboratory of Giuseppe Vallarelli and Dental Clinic The Excellence srl, shows as the digitalization of the workflow presents a lot of advantages if we consider the time of realization of the refractory feldspathic veneers – which represent one of the best example of precision in dental field.

The need to digitize a part of the dental workflow is born from the mdt. Giuseppe Vallarelli to improve the efficiency of his laboratory to make refractory feldspathic veneers quickly but without to ruin the esthetical aspect.

It is known as this kind of manufacture is still the best expression of dental craftsmanship and it requires long time of preparation for dental model. In this case we thought to digitize these phases to allow the dental technician to bypass the realization of Geller model and once he receives the dental impression, he can directly build the feldspathic veneers with the dental ceramics.

Once we received the impression from the dental clinic, we have scanned it creating a digital mesh with the dental lab scan Autoscan DS-MIX without the use of spray, turning it into a digital mesh.

The supervision of mdt. Giuseppe Vallarelli has been very important because he could carefully judge the precision and the accuracy of the generated mesh, but above all he could evaluate the finish line edges, focal point for the success of the veneers.

Through this scan the virtual model with removable dies has been realized, then it was quickly printed by Accufab-D1.

At the same time, a plaster model as a master model has been made to verify the precision and as comparison tool of the 3d printing dental model.

After only an hour, mdt. Vallarelli had on his workstation: master model, working model and dies ready to be duplicate in refractory material. After duplication, the refractory dies had the same fitting as the 3d printing dies in 3d printing dental model.

Through this simple step we have been able to pass from dental impression to ceramic step in only two hours. We can say that the active working time of dental technician was only half an hour.

After ceramization and refinement, the veneers have been released from refractory material and fitted on the working dental model through 3d printing dies, verifying the fitting with model or adjacent teeth and occlusion accuracy.

Later on, to compare the obtained digital result with traditional workflow, veeners have been positioned on master plaster model doing the same checks already done on the printed model. The result has been the same from the point of view of fitting as well as contact point and precision of marginal line.

In conclusion, We can say that the technology is becoming increasingly a solid reality in dental field. In spite of perplexity of dental professionals we can demonstrate the best precision of these tools compared to the traditional workflow.

I want to thank The Excellence srl dental clinic and especially mdt. Giuseppe Vallarelli and his staff for sharing whit us this study case, for their availability and knowledge of materials. Thanks for leading us in a critic and constructive way, during this experience.

Replacing traditional materials with new generation materials speeds up the workflow, without compromising on quality and precision point of view. This demonstrates that knowledge is the most important thing for placing new technologies and new materials side by side with the workflow.