Easy fitting is one of the most important things for all dental cases in Robust dental lab. Please imagine doctors receive our dental cases (crowns, bridges and dentures). They place the cases in the patients mouths without adjustments (or with only minor adjustments). Patients will quickly leave the dental office with a smiling face, because they don’t have to suffer from long chair time, and have more time for the day. Doctors are feeling good too, because they have more time for other patients, and quick patient-visit-time helps them earn great reputation.
In order to achieve this happy ending, Robust dental comes up with 2 ideas, and always follows the ideas strictly and chronically.
1. For easy fitting, we always produce 2 checking models.
We have to admit that even experienced technicians could make mistakes. In order to minimize mistakes with margins, we always produce 2 checking models for each dental case (for both digital cases and physical cases). One checking model is for technicians to check margins, contacts and occlusion, while another checking model is only for QC to check everything.
Therefore, technicians produce and adjust crowns on the working model, and examine fitting, contacts and occlusion on one checking model. However, only QC can use the other checking model. This ensures that our QC can immediately find out problems before shipment, if technicians have made a mistake with margins.
Finally, we will ship working model and one checking model to our customers, and keep another checking model in our lab. If fitting problems happen, we can examine compare new models (or new scans) and the checking models in our lab. This helps us find solutions effectively.
2. We often use different brands of printers for checking models.
Each 3D printer needs calibration regularly. However, each printer could go wrong, even if we take great care of it. Suppose a dental lab makes a crown on problematic 3D models (without technicians knowing it), and delivers the crown to the dentist. Finally, both the dentist and patient would have a bad time.
To avoid this mistake, we use 2 different brands of 3D printers to manufacture working models and checking models. If one printer goes wrong, the printed model will be different from the model from another printer. Once we find that a crown cannot seat well on the working model and checking model, we can immediately examine all printers, and make correction in time. This ensures everything is correct before we deliver the crown to dentists.
The printed models from the 2 different kinds of printers are with different colors. Therefore, our technicians will not get confused with models. In this example, the orange-color model is used as checking model, while the gray-color model is for working model. Our finished crown should seat well on the working model and the 2 checking models.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, we always produce 2 checking models for each dental case, even though it seems to be stupid. This helps minimize man-made mistakes, and ensures easy fitting for each dental case. Please leave your comments if you have better ideas for easily fitting dental cases.
