January 15, 2010
Sorry for not posting more regularly – between the holidays and the installation of our milling machine, it has been a little hectic. After a little bit of a rocky start, we made a ton of progress last week.
The zirconia copings and full contour crowns – which we will be marketing as SDL ORIGINal Z – are turning out great. We have both a High Strength (HS) formulation for posterior crowns and bridges, as well as a High Translucency (HT) which we are using with anterior crowns and the full contour zirconia -FCZ- crowns.
As for titanium…I put together a little video (No criticism will be tolerated – I’m just a guy with a Mac), and posted it on YouTube this morning. Its about 3 minutes long, and gives an abbreviated look at our process for producing a titanium coping. Please stick with the video until the end – I think you will be amazed at the final result. We plan on veneering the coping with the TriCeram porcelain on Monday, and I plan on posting a subsequent shot of the final crown.
Click here to go to YouTube (There is a goofy soundtrack, so make sure to have your speakers on…)
With our new capabilities (and the ever-volatile pricing of gold and palladium), I will be putting together a new fee schedule that I hope to publish next weekend, and will take effect on February 1, 2010…
January 10, 2010
I spent Friday morning scanning, designing and milling four zirconia copings using our new Origin Pro Duo 5000 milling machine. Have to say, I’m pretty pleased.
I scanned the cases as anatomical copings using our 3Shape software. This entails scanning the working model, opposing model and die, as well as a “bite scan” with the two models articulated. After scanning, a full contour proposal is provided, and after a little tweaking of the contacts and occlusion, the software performs an automated cutback of the full contour proposal – I used a cutback of 1.0mm and a minimum coping thickness of 0.4mm to provide a nice combination of minimal coping thickness and support for the veneering ceramic.
I then loaded the coping files into the B&D CAM software. The Pro Duo uses material pucks, and the CAM software is used to orient the copings in the puck to minimize material waste. Its a pretty intuitive program. One feature allows you to select portions of each coping to be milled using a small 0.6mm bur – this allows us to mill the margins to very exacting tolerances and minimizes the hand finishing of the sintered copings.
All four copings fit very well. There was practically no finishing of the internal surfaces, and only a quick once-over-lightly of the margins. They are ready to stack!
We also scanned and remitted the copings to our Lava milling center. Hope to have pictures tomorrow…
January 9, 2010
Received an email yesterday containing a survey being conducted by 3M ESPE having to do with the possibility of being able to use a Lava Scanner to design metal copings and frameworks which would then be fabricated using Bego’s laser sintering technology. In theory, I think its a great idea. We’ve done a couple of cases using Imagen copings, which I realize is a different process, and the results were good. If the Bego process provides similar results, I think that’s a positive step in expanding the functionality of the Lava scanner.
January 8, 2010
Yesterday, I described a few mishaps with our Origin Pro Duo 5000 milling machine. It turns out I may have been at fault. The problem with the titanium bridge may have been a result on the pattern being too large for the puck from which I attempted to mill it. To be honest, I did not notice this when I was positioning the pattern in the puck using the CAM software, but stranger things have happened.
This morning I scanned, designed, milled and shaded 4 zirconia copings. They are in the sintering furnace, and I will check them tomorrow and give my opinion as to fit and appearance.
January 7, 2010
Our Origin Pro Duo 5000 milling machine is installed, and working. Sort of.
First, let me say the guys from B&D are some of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of working with in our industry. They’ve been responsive and helpful, to a fault.
However…
We have milled three materials to date. The zirconia millings have been excellent. The marginal integrity of both the copings and full contour units exceeded my expectations, requiring minimal hand finishing. We milled one titanium coping and it also fit very well. The PMMA material, which is really of little interest to me since we have a 3D Systems ProJet Resin Printer, required some “dialing in” of the parameters to get a decent result. At this point, I will probably choose to continue to print castable patterns, thinking of PMMA as a backup material.
Last night, we attempted to mill a handful of full contour patterns in PMMA, and experienced a tool break about half way through the process. B&D believes the problem may lay in the tool strategy that was used, and has hopefully rectified the issue. We were unable to verify the new strategy as we experienced another set of problems attempting to mill a titanium bridge, some of which may have been my fault.
B&D is currently looking at the tool strategy for the titanium mill. I had to leave a little early (Wife and baby both feeling under the weather). I plan on working this weekend. My hope is to do as many millings as I can, and make as many mistakes as possible. Seems to be the way I learn best.
Still experiencing problems loading images from my laptop, so I will take some photos over the weekend and upload from there. Ciao for now…
