Denti Tech Services
What the technician needs at each of the six steps, and what each missing item costs in days.
Step one is the digital impression. The scan must show the margin clearly; a torn or unreadable margin is the most common reason a case stalls at intake. Milling accuracy of 20-50 µm on a 5-axis machine cannot rescue a margin the scanner never saw.
Step two is the bite registration. The opposing arch and bite record let the technician build occlusion that does not need ten minutes of chairside grinding. A crown that arrives high is almost always a case that arrived without a bite.
Step three is shade. A tab reference plus a photo under neutral light is the minimum for anterior work; a single shade letter produces a technically correct, visually flat crown.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Steps four and five belong to the lab: about one working day of CAD design, 30-45 minutes of milling, a 6-8 hour sintering cycle, then finishing and roughly half a day of quality control. This is where an under-reduced preparation is discovered — the design software shows the thin spot — and where the lab calls for more clearance instead of making a crown that will fracture.
Step six is the seat, with one optional but documented detour: the fit-check appointment. On a 3-unit bridge it adds 7-10 days, and it exists because a fit error found before finishing costs days, while the same error found at the seat costs a remake.
Send all three practice-side items together — scan, bite, shade with photo — and the case enters the queue the day it arrives. Sent piecemeal, each missing item is a working day that never appears on any schedule. The schedules themselves are on the turnaround page; the material those schedules assume is on the materials comparison page.
Further reading