Katana Crowns are Alien to Me: CEREC and $50 Katana Zirconia from Alien Milling

A lot of us are anxiously waiting to get our hands on the Katana blocks coming out in March which are multi colored Zirconia which supposedly has translucency similar to Emax.  Todd and I were at the IDS in 2017 where they announced it.  30 minutes in the speed fire.  About 750 Mpa compared to 980 for CEREC Zirconia and 500 for Emax, but the nice thing is that Katana can be conventionally cemented.  #30 and #20 both have cracked tooth syndrome, I guess I could have done onlays, but I really wanted to cover them up, and yes I know my preps are ugly! Almost as ugly as me in glasses in the video below:

Alien milling is a lab in Cali that only mills, sinters and stains and glazes.  They can accept any STL. You can design the case or have them design it for an extra $15 bucks.  I have ExoCAD so I designed it.  But check out the prices!!  I have a case coming in tomorrow for an implant crown with the Alien multi layer zirconia.  I was told it is not as translucent as Katana.  I opted for the $12 stain and glaze which is really just glaze so in the future I won’t.  But think about it, multi layer zirconia for $28! True, its not chair side but if you submit before 2:00 pacific you can get it in two days. So these crowns worked out to be about $50 each.

I was really blown away by the translucency.  Now this is an A1 case so its still pretty white, but you can see where we are almost at the same translucency of Emax.  The CEREC Zirconia is pretty chalky, but nothing new there.

I printed a “Geller Model”, which is a model with removable dies.  Checked the fit which was tight, but I wanted to test in the mouth.  I set my contacts in ExoCAD at .04 for the interproximals and .1 for the occlusion (these would be negative values in CEREC).  Too tight and a little high so I’ll be dialing those down.  This was printed in the Phrozen 3D printer which can print at 50 microns in the XY and goes for $1000.  I don’t recommend this as a primary printer as the build plate is small and its still a bit buggy, but you can’t beat the accuracy.

In the mouth I think the Katana block actually looks the best.  In all fairness $30 had an amalgam tattoo and I used an LT block. I am hoping that the chair side version is as translucent as the lab version.  More cases this week with Katana.