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Most dental clinics outsource their laboratory work. A crown or veneer is designed at the clinic, a physical impression is sent to an external laboratory, and the fabricated restoration arrives back at the clinic 10–14 days later. If the fit or shade requires adjustment, the restoration goes back to the laboratory. The cycle adds weeks to treatment timelines and introduces information loss at every handover point.
Dream Dental Studio is Dazzle Dental Clinic’s in-house digital laboratory. It fabricates every crown, veneer, implant abutment, full-arch bridge, surgical guide, and provisional restoration on-site. This is not a convenience feature — it is a clinical infrastructure that changes what is achievable for patients, particularly for complex cases with multiple restorations, implant prosthetics, or international travel constraints. For more on the technical workflow, see our digital revolution article.
The Digital Workflow: From Scan to Restoration
Intraoral scanning (3Shape TRIOS 5): The TRIOS 5 replaces physical impressions for all restorative cases. It captures a full-arch 3D digital model in minutes, with real-time colour imaging that shows tooth shade variation and soft tissue contour. The scan is accurate to within microns — significantly more consistent than a physical impression, which can distort during setting or transport. The scan is transmitted directly to Dream Dental Studio the same day.
CAD design: The restoration is designed digitally using the TRIOS scan data. For implant cases, the abutment angulation and emergence profile are designed against the virtual bone model. For cosmetic cases, the digital design is previewed with the clinician before milling begins. For full-arch cases, the bridge geometry, occlusal contacts, and cantilever dimensions are set in the digital design before any material is committed.
Milling (Amann Girrbach Ceramill Motion 2): The digital design is sent to the Amann Girrbach milling unit, which mills the restoration from a block of the specified material — zirconia, lithium disilicate (E.max CAD), PMMA (for provisional restorations), or titanium (for implant abutments). The milling process takes 15–40 minutes depending on material and restoration complexity.
Sintering and glazing (Ivoclar Programat CS6): Zirconia restorations are sintered in the Programat CS6 furnace at precise temperature profiles that determine the material’s final crystalline structure and translucency. E.max restorations undergo crystallisation firing. The furnace cycle is 20–90 minutes. Post-sintering glazing and characterisation — the technician’s manual surface work that creates natural-looking depth in the ceramic — is applied before the restoration is delivered to the clinical chair.
3D printing (Asiga Max): Surgical guides for implant placement are printed from the CBCT and virtual surgical plan data. Provisional restorations for same-day delivery are printed in PMMA-based resin. The Asiga Max prints at 27-micron XY resolution — sufficient for clinically accurate surgical guide fabrication.
What This Changes for Patients
Timeline compression: Routine crown: scan to delivery in 1–2 working days. Same-day crowns: available for uncomplicated single-unit cases. Full-arch provisional bridge: fabricated from pre-surgical scans and ready for placement at end of surgery day. Adjustments at any stage: made same-day rather than requiring a new external laboratory cycle.
Precision at multiple implants: Passive fit — the degree to which a full-arch bridge sits on all implants simultaneously without stress — is technically demanding. Misfit above approximately 150 microns creates stress at implant necks and compromises long-term outcomes. Digital fabrication from the intraoral scan data produces more consistent marginal fit than impression-based fabrication because there is no dimensional change from setting material or transport distortion.
Direct clinician-technician communication: When the treating clinician has a shade preference, wants to adjust the contour of a restoration, or needs to modify the bite of a full-arch bridge, the conversation happens directly with the technician who fabricated the restoration. Information is not transmitted through written notes or relayed via courier. For aesthetically demanding cases — multi-veneer smile makeovers, anterior implant crowns — this direct communication is where clinical excellence is expressed or lost.
International patient protocols: Patients travelling from the UK, GCC, Australia, and Africa for full-arch implant surgery receive a provisional bridge on surgery day because it is fabricated in-house from pre-surgical digital scans before the patient arrives. The final zirconia bridge is delivered at the second visit. This two-visit structure is only practical when the laboratory is in-house; an external laboratory cannot reliably compress these timelines around international travel schedules.
FAQs
Q1: Can I get a crown fabricated the same day at Dazzle?
For uncomplicated single-unit crowns (posterior teeth, straightforward shade), same-day delivery is available. For more complex cases — anterior crowns requiring detailed shade matching and surface characterisation, multi-unit cases, implant-supported crowns — delivery is typically the next working day after the scan appointment.
Q2: Does the in-house laboratory affect the cost of treatment?
Dazzle’s in-house laboratory reduces the cost component attributable to external laboratory fees. For patients, this means the cost of a crown or veneer at Dazzle reflects in-house fabrication rather than the margin applied when external laboratory fees are passed through. The clinical quality is equivalent to or superior to external laboratory work — with a faster turnaround.
Q3: What materials does Dream Dental Studio work with?
Zirconia (monolithic, for posterior crowns and full-arch bridges), IPS e.max CAD (lithium disilicate, for anterior crowns and veneers), PMMA (for provisional restorations and same-day temporaries), titanium and titanium alloy (for custom implant abutments), and glass-ceramic blocks for CAD/CAM veneer cases. Feldspathic porcelain hand-layered work is also available for cases requiring maximum optical depth in the anterior region.
Q4: What is the advantage of digital scanning over physical impressions?
Physical impressions can distort during setting (syneresis or imbibition in alginate), during pouring of the stone model, and during shipping to the external laboratory. Each stage introduces potential dimensional error. A digital scan captures the geometry once, transmits it digitally without any physical distortion, and the restoration is milled directly from that data. For multi-unit implant cases where marginal fit at each implant is critical, this reduction in dimensional variability is clinically significant.
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