I received my zirconia crown after milling, coloring and sintering last week. Today I worked on fitting it to the model.
Fitting was done in three main steps.
- Trim the inner surface of the crown
- Approximal
- Occlusal
First, I applied a hardener to the margins.
Then, I applied ink to the prepped tooth.
Next, I placed the crown on the prepped tooth. Naturally, the crown didn’t fit perfectly at first — in some places, it was too tight. When I removed the crown and looked inside, there were areas where the ink had gotten stuck.
I had to carefully shave off those areas and keep trimming until the crown slid in and out smoothly.
Once the inner surface of the crown has been shaved to ensure a good fit, check the fit with the adjacent teeth. Try placing a piece of plastic wrap between the teeth to see if it fits tightly and moves freely. For this fitting, the approximal contact area was fine without touching it.
Next, conduct the occlusal check. Remove the crowns and place a piece of film between the adjacent teeth to assess biting.
Then, with the crown in place, repeat the process. If biting occurs with a red film on the crown, indicating excessive pressure, trim the affected area. For lateral movement assessment, use a blue film and trim where blue color appears, indicating excursion.
It was so fun and exciting to try fitting my own designed teeth.
I spent the rest of the day learning to design temporary teeth and then designed two more single crowns. I’m becoming much more comfortable with single crown designs. Moving forward, I plan to practice using shortcuts and designing quickly.
I also learned how to design a provisional tooth in exocad.
