I’m Bringing Alginate Back: Digital scans from unpowdered alginate

Digital Dentures are sort of an oxymoron.  You can’t take a digital intra oral scan, as the soft tissue of the cheek and buccal vestibule keep moving and are hard to image. So we need to take impressions and either pour them up and scan or scan the PVS impression material. Alginate is a great low cost impression material, but can distort and dry out.  I wanted to get custom trays and occlusal rims on this patient so we took alginates and just scanned them directly and made models and trays in ExoCAD. No powder and no stone. We used the Shining $4500 lab scanner and it was a quick low maintenance scan.