3M ESPE's Lava Ultimate helps Dental Crafters produce crowns in fewer steps

THE LAB Dental Crafters is a family owned full-service FDA-registered dental laboratory, focused on servicing dentists and their patients throughout North America and beyond. With more than 20 years of experience, co-owners Brad and Bob Slominski pride themselves on bridging art and science by providing esthetically pleasing, quality restorative products to include crowns, dentures, implants and sleep apnea devices.

THE PRODUCT Lava™ Ultimate Restorative, from 3M™ ESPE™ and available through Jensen Dental, is a new CAD/CAM Resin Nano Ceramic material with long-lasting esthetics and performance. Based on 3M ESPE’s nanotechnology, Lava Ultimate offers a polish that lasts and a fast, no-firing process that is easy to mill.  Lava Ultimate CAD/CAM is resilient, not brittle, and is incredibly durable and shock absorbent. A few minutes of polishing are all that is necessary to achieve an enamel-like luster and esthetics your doctors will love.

Other product benefits include:

• Excellent durability backed by a 10-year warranty

• Less wear to opposing dentition than glass ceramics

• Absorption of chewing forces, which reduces stress

• Adjustability for occlusion with additive or subtractive techniques

THE RESULTS
Here’s what Brad Slominski had to say about it:

What do you like most about Lava Ultimate?
Lava Ultimate is a unique and intriguing product. Made of Resin Nano Ceramic,  it has a greater resiliency allowing us to place it over the top of an implant. It also captivated our attention as it can be repaired while the product is still in the mouth. For example, if the doctor over adjusts the cusp tip, contact, margin or ridge, he can add adhesive on the resin and add chairside composite on the spot. As a result, it saves time for the doctor as he doesn’t have to return the crown back to Dental Crafters.

Because of the new technology of the Resin Nano Ceramic, we maintain some of the strength characteristics that we have lost with composite type crowns. Lava Ultimate benefits our lab and our doctors as it gives the doctors chairside repairability that they have been asking for in crowns for a long time.

When did you first learn about it?
I was interviewed by 3M ESPE about two years ago, talking about how I thought the product would be received and used in the market place. With the opportunity to do beta testing to include an in vivo study, I sent out 15–20 crowns to the doctors to get their feedback. As a result, the study confirmed this product would be well received in the market place.

How did you first use the product?
We started using the products in the posterior region of the mouth and over the top of implants. We have been placing the product in the first and second molar regions where we have been using full contour zirconia. The result is a more chameleon effect as the product tends to blend in better than a full contour zirconia product, while still giving our doctors the options to repair them intraorally.

Is there a training curve?
It’s a very simplistic and efficient process as it falls into the realm of what we have been doing at Dental Crafters already, especially with our CAD/CAM capabilities over the past eight years. The only learning curve that we have experienced has to do with the polishing process. When polishing the product, you have to be very careful around the margins and contacts so you don’t polish them off.

Because of this, our technicians have had no trouble implementing Lava Ultimate into the workflow. It is an efficient product to produce in the laboratory. There are less steps for the technician to follow. The ability to add composite to light contacts is an added bonus for our technicians, too.

How have Customers responded?
The customers have been pleasantly surprised with the chameleon effect and how it looks natural in the oral environment. They are not only intrigued by the ability to use it over the top of implants as a result of its toughness but also the ability to adjust the restoration when working chairside. It’s an added insurance policy for them as they don’t have to cut a crown off if something would happen. If they over adjust it in the mouth, they don’t have to send the crown back to the laboratory for us to add a contact, they can add it themselves.

It’s an efficient product for our laboratory because there are less steps in manufacturing the crown. After the product is milled, all we have to do is make slight adjustments and polish it, which is very appealing. With that said, you do pay for the efficiency within the consumable product itself but our ROI is greater as we are able to produce more in the laboratory while still giving us an acceptable product in return.