Luke Kahng, CDT, offers his step-by-step technique for fabricating a porcelain-to-titanium restoration using Nobel Biocare's NobelProcera scanner and GC's Initial™ Titanium porcelain.
In my laboratory, we're always looking for more effective ways to create our restorations," says Luke Kahng, CDT, Owner of LSK121 Oral Prosthetics, Naperville, IL. "The better we research and incorporate new products, the more options we can give our dentist-clients to help them grow their practices.
"We had heard the buzz about titanium so our laboratory began carefully researching it, including its benefits and cost-saving properties and how to create beautiful esthetics when using the material.
"We discovered that titanium has many benefits--it's lightweight, biocompatible, cost efficient, offers excellent esthetics and is classified by the ADA between high noble and noble crowns.
"Also, since we own the Nobel Biocare NobelProcera™ scanning system, we're able to scan our model and get our titanium copings back from the milling center within two days. There's no need for waxing, divesting, investing or degassing which saves us time and energy!
"On the other hand, when working with titanium we also found that sandblasting is necessary after each bake, CTE must be controlled, and the time and cooling temperatures must be carefully monitored. For instance, there's a 1.6 difference in the CTEs of a Nobel Biocare Titanium coping (10.16 CTE) and GC Initial™ Titanium Porcelain (8.6 CTE) so we must control the long-term cooling temperature and extend our cooling rate by 30% when we're firing these restorations."
Case Description
A 55-year-old man with a 10-year-old bridge was allergic to the yellow precious alloy used in the restoration. The dentist-client wanted alternatives to an all-ceramic or zirconia bridge so Kahng recommended a porcelain-to-titanium restoration.
