SDL ZBrid Custom Abutment & FCZ

March 24, 2010

Here’s a case on which we are fabricating a custom cast abutment featuring a Biomet 3i Certain Implant.  Just for fun, I grabbed the impression and had a duplicate model made so I could make a shaded ZBrid Abutment and a Full Contour Zirconia restoration.  Above is an image of the Titanium Insert screwed into the implant replica.  I removed the tissue from the model so you can see quality of the machined interface.

Here’s the Zirconia Abutment Head which was designed using 3Shape’s Abutment Software, and milled on our Origin Pro 5000 – its been shaded, sintered and cemented to the titanium insert using RelyX Unicem.  This type of abutment couples the esthetic advantages of shaded zirconia with the fit of a machined titanium interface, and features a titanium screw seat which eliminates the potential for the torquing of the screw to fracture the abutment.  (Note – we chose to fabricate this abutment with 4.1 diameter insert as the client had requested platform switching.)

The abutment seated on the model with the tissue element in place.

And the FCZ in place.

Again, the FCZ is designed using 3Shape, and milled on the Pro 5000.  The cool thing about this is I only scanned the case once.  The abutment design and final contours of the crown were completed at the same time; the files were split and milled separately.  The crown and abutment are both fabricated from the same material – the relative esthetics of the case won’t suffer should the patient suffer any future tissue resorption.

© 2010, Jeff Saylors. All rights reserved.