I Want My Two Dollars: $2.50 CAD/CAM Designs from Evident, Free Solid Zirconia Crown from Alien, CEREC

I posted on Dental Hacks an offer from a lab software company, Evident Labs, offering to take any scan from any IOS whether its CEREC, Itero, 3Shape, Carestream etc and design a restoration for $2.50 per tooth.  There were some responses from dentists that were curious about it.  But I would say that the majority of the responses were pretty negative.  The assumption, I am thus assuming , was that at $2.50 it must either be poor (its a crown design, the computer, whether its in Bangladesh or Burbank, does most of the work) or it was acquired using slave labor in some third world country.  But what can you do with the design after you get it?  You can either mill it in your office with a mill that excepts it (not chair side  CEREC), or send it to a milling center.  There is a company based in the good ‘ol US of A, Alien Milling, that mills various types of Zirconia from $22 for monochromatic, $26 for multicolored, and $36 for Katana which is a high translucency multicolored zirconia.  But, every Friday, if you sign up for their email list, they give you a code for a free crown, aptly named “Free Crown Friday”, the code today is JDTWoW

So I am always up for “human experimentation” so my assistant needed a crown and I sent one in.  The portal at Event Labs is really easy to use after they set you up an account.  Incidentally, Alien Milling can design your restoration for $8 if you don’t want to jump through hoops.  I also printed a model on my $1200 Phrozen Make printer to test the margins.

Even though I have a porcelain furnace I decided to “keep it real” and just hand polish as most docs that may want to take advantage of this may have a scanning system without a mill and thus, without a porcelain oven.  I used Diashine fine and fine soft and a chamois wheel after a Mesiinger white lab wheel.  I printed a die and model on the Phrozen $1200 el cheapo printer to test the fit.  I will say that the contacts were perfect on the model, yet I had to adjust in the mouth, so that may be an ExoCAD setting issue.

So here is the final, which opens up some discussion on what is clinically acceptable.  The contacts were super tight.  The setting they used was -.1mm which in ExoCAD means 100 microns penetrating the neighboring tooth.  In the next crown I will dial that back to a contact strength of 0.  There was a little bit, not much, of occlusal adjustment and the crown occlusal offset was .2 which means .2 out of occlusion, so I will switch that to .3 on the next crown.  So lets talk opacity, yes its too opaque.  Not as bad as Bruxir, but not as nice as layered.  Is it exquisitely layered with stains and 12 different colored areas of translucency?  No but neither is the most popular material in dentistry that is used on posterior teeth, gold!  Will it last?  I am sure, the margins seemed good, contacts and occlusion are good, its 980 MPA compression strength should stand up to most bruxers.  Not bad for a couple of bucks!  Will post another in the next few weeks!

 

Want to learn more about 3D Printing and Scanners?  Come to the next 3D Printing Party in LA July 20 and 21!!

 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dental-3d-printing-party-los-angeles-tickets-43287363670