To Mill or Not to Mill: The Pluses and Minuses of CEREC in the Office.
With digital dentistry making huge strides and becoming an everyday part of our field,
it is very tempting to try out the new technology to improve and hone our current clinical skills.
Every office has something digital, weather an apex locator for every endodontic root canal
procedure or digital radiography and being able to blow up an intraoral image to the size of a
monitor screen for diagnostic reasons, dentistry of the past is just something that would hinder
our practice today.
It is due to this logic and the introduction of the Zirconium CEREC milling that our
office took the plunge and purchased the new CEREC 4-motor unit and Omicam that is capable
of milling Zirconium crowns and the Speed fire oven that is able to Sinter these milled crowns
and give them the strength of up to 900 mPAs after heating them to almost 3000 °F. The other
material that the Speed fire is able to use is the Duo blocks by Dens plies, a Zirconium reinforced lithium dislocates.
The digital impressions are truly amazing. The omnicam shoots a video so nothing
is missed, and you instantly know if anything was not fully captured. It is great not to have to
use impression material, or “Guue,” as my patients call it and have to wait for 5 min for it to
set, watching the patient fight back gagging. It is also an incredible help to be able to check the
impression with the patient chair side and rescan any areas you would want more detail of at
huge magnification.
Dent Open J. 2016; 3(1): e4-e5. doi: 10.17140/DOJ-3-e006
