Computer designed & fabricated crowns...the future is CAD CAM!

 How would you like to be able to have your next crown made without having to have a messy impression?   Would you like to be able to have it made quicker without the usual 7-10 day wait?  Well I've started using the latest in CAD CAM  technology available to dentistry today that will do just that.  

by Oakville Dentist Dr Steven Rosenblat

Today it is very common for  just about anything that is going to be manufactured to use computer technology to aid in the design and fabrication of that product.  It is called: Computer assisted design and computer assisted manufacturing or CAD CAM.  Dentistry has traditionally relied on custom hand crafting to make restorations such as crowns.  The majority of crowns today are still made this way, laboriously layering and baking porcelain on to metal substructures  for strength.  They work well but can be less than ideal cosmetically.  New very strong types of porcelain have been developed that allow dentistry to exploit computer technologies to precisely fabricate crowns and other restorations from a solid block of these new, very strong porcelains.  With no metal needed to support the porcelain these new crowns look very life-like.  Using computers to fabricate crowns means high precicison crowns fabricated more quickly than ever before with much more consistent results.  YOu need spend little time with a temporary crown and all these improvements come at no additonal cost to the patients!

E4D CAD CAM ScannerNow the best part of this is how we tell the computer what your teeth look like so it can make you that new crown.   When a technician is going to hand craft a crown the dentist will take an "impression" or mold of your teeth.  This putty like material has to stay in your mouth for a few minutes to set.  After it is removed from the mouth we put a plaster like stone ( think of a cement truck pouring cement to make a sidewalk) into the impression to make a model of your teeth which is used to make the crown.  Well the days of impressions are numbered.  To make a CAD CAM crown, we use a computer scanner to laser scan the tooth to be crowned, sending the information to the computer that will make the crown!  This results in more accurate and better fitting crowns.  While we still need impressions of teeth, scanning technology is advancing quickly and soon we will be able to scan all the teeth of the mouth and completely eliminate the need for messy impressions!

I am really excited about the beautiful crowns I have been able to make for my patients with this new technology as you can see in the photos I've included here.