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When using a white zirconia disc for manufacturing a full contour crown in your lab, there are areas in the workflow that can become problematic. These problems often lead to in-house remakes or poor color matching which are costly to a dental lab.

Some of the challenges you can encounter include:

• Obtaining the perfect recipe for green-state coloring using white zirconia is challenging and technique-sensitive. There are several techniques used and all provide a different result.
• When adding a second technician to the coloring process, techniques change as well as the resulting shades.
• Sorting the various units from the disc and maintaining which unit is what shade. Units are randomly placed onto the discs through the CAM process and with the shades of each unit at random, it is easy to cut a unit from the disc and get the shade sorting incorrect. When this happens, the restoration is likely a color failure.

Recent developments in pre-shaded zirconia have eliminated these problems as well as reduce doctor complaints. Excessive chairside adjustments leave an island of bright white on the crowns. Pre-shaded materials available in all 16 VITA shades like Zirlux 16+ enable a dental lab to select the desired right shade disc prior to milling. Using these types of zirconia in your workflow is far more efficient, has a lower cost of production, has no coloring liquid inventory concerns and eliminates green state coloring with a far more consistent result.

Materials and workflows are different for every laboratory out there. The most important element to remember is finding what works for your business, your technicians and above all else, the patient.

Thanks for reading,

Your Zirlux Team