When Should I Contact a Dental Lab?

Contact a dental lab to fabricate custom crowns, bridges, dentures, and mouthguards for your patients. They are run by skilled technicians who use state-of-the-art equipment for quick turnarounds for your custom prosthetics. They also offer professional insight and help with material selection, digital impressions, and prosthetic repairs and adjustments. Here’s when to contact a dental lab:

New Restorations and Repairs

Partnering with a dental lab allows you to order premium quality restorations for your clients. Leading labs fabricate customized restorations made of zirconia, PFM, IPS e.max, and full-cast gold. Zirconia restorations offer the precision of computer-aided design and manufacturing, providing high-strength prosthetics. The material’s translucency also delivers a more natural look for new crowns, bridges, veneers, implants, and other fixed restorations. Porcelain fused to metal, or PFM, restorations offer longevity and natural-looking internal characteristics, while IPS e.max is a renowned ceramic used to deliver outstanding aesthetics and precision fits. Full-cast gold prosthetics offer durability and functional success.

Labs also fabricate flexible, bio-compatible partials, full dentures, and metal partials. They also offer treatment planning for implant overdentures and custom abutments. They use your specifications and impressions of the client’s gingival anatomy to create precise prosthetics that fit comfortably. These labs also handle repairs and adjustments of various prosthetics, including dentures and crowns. If your clients report a broken, loose, or painful prosthetic, you can contact a lab to help with repairs and alterations. The labs troubleshoot issues with the material, fit, and quality of existing restorations and offer solutions. They also offer routine maintenance and track upcoming cases to help you minimize delays.

Mouthguards and Sleep Devices

Leading dental laboratories fabricate custom mouthguards, splints, and sleep and snoring devices for your clients. They offer pro-form mouthguards for enhanced protection and retention without sacrificing speech and comfort. You can also order rigid acrylic nightguards or hard and soft, milled nightguard seats. Rigid acrylic nightguards offer no flexibility, which helps maintain the results achieved by aligners. They’re suitable for clients with bruxism. Hard and soft splints feature a soft liner for a comfortable, secure fit and a hard occlusal surface. Dental laboratories also fabricate sleep and snoring devices to promote deep, restful sleep.

Leading labs offer various oral appliances, including thin, flexible, and comfortable mandibular advancement devices and splints. The appliances help keep the airway open to relieve the symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea. Creating mandibular advancement devices requires expertise, special equipment, and technology, which labs provide. Labs also use clinical tests to ascertain the quality, safety, and success of oral appliances and materials used in their design. You can order elastic mandibular advancement appliances that use elastic bands to adjust the lower jaw and reduce snoring. Labs also offer MADs built on the foundation of CPR, giving your clients comfortable alternatives to CPAP machines.

Clear Aligners and Snap-on Smiles

You can contact a dental laboratory for custom smile shapers and snap-on smiles for your clients. Clear aligners are made using biocompatible thermoplastics and offer discretion, durability, and comfort thanks to design precision. Labs provide starter kits featuring case boxes, display boards, patient literature, and Rx forms. You can take digital or traditional impressions of your client and fill out the Rx form. Dental laboratories will then analyze your case and create a treatment plan featuring the number of aligners your patient needs. The plan has been sent back to you for approval, pending the fabrication of the aligners.

You can also work with dental laboratories to provide your clients with custom, removable snap-on smiles. The option fits clients with gaps, stains, crooked, or missing teeth or those who aren’t candidates for implants and bridges. Snap-on smiles snap over existing teeth and doesn’t impinge on the gingival tissues or palate. No adhesives are required, and users can eat, drink, and speak normally. Laboratories use digital design and manufacturing to fabricate snap-on smiles based on the impressions you take.

Find a Reputable Dental Lab Today

Partnering with a laboratory allows you to provide dental prostheses for various treatment plans. The labs offer a fully-equipped facility with modern technology, experienced technicians, and high-quality materials. Contact a dental lab today to find out more about their services.