Tips to Help Your Dental Lab Tech

In this dental lab tip sheet, Renstrom Dental Studio and Crocus Dental Technology offer a few ideas to consider before you develop your next crown and bridge case. It will help your dental technicians achieve the most predictable, esthetically pleasing, and longest lasting results for your patients. By following these tips, you and the patient will smile confidently!

• Adequate reduction (especially facially and occlusally) gives the dental technician room to create natural looking restorations- ideally 2mm of occlusal and 1.5mm facial reduction gives ample space for porcelain
• Avoid sharp angles and edges on preparations. This is very important when working with all-ceramic materials, even zirconia. The leading cause of failure in all-ceramic restorations is fractures over a sharp corner of the tooth prep
• Stumpf shades are important for any all-ceramic case. This will help your dental technician in using the correct degree of opacity and translucency when they build your case. When taking a stumpf shade, it isn’t absolutely necessary to use a stumpf shade guide. A reference from any shade guide can work.
• Pre-op models are very useful for determining tooth function and to visualize what the dental patient’s dentition was like and where the technician can go with the crown and bridge design. Pre-op models will give your technician a foundation from which to build upon.
• In large cases a diagnostic wax up can be very helpful in communicating case design with the doctor and the patient before tooth preparation. A diagnostic wax up can also be used to make temporaries and allow the patient to “try-out” their new smile. This is the best way to ensure a predictable result.
• Photos are an extremely useful tool in communicating tooth shades and characterization- the better the photo quality, the more accurate the dental technician can relate the information.
• Communication with the technician, whether positive or negative is absolutely crucial to providing excellent dentistry (We send report cards with all our cases and pay close attention to the information returned on them!)
• Discuss the dental patient’s interest in bleaching before any crown or bridge case- We have had many occasions where patients want to bleach after their case has been prepared when coming in for a custom shade match. The patient should be done with their bleaching for at least 2 weeks to assure an accurate shade match.

For more contact Randy Renstrom, CDT - randy@renstrom.com or call (651) 407-0491