5–7 working days
Monolithic zirconia, scan to dispatch. One day of that is CAD design and half a day is QC; the mill itself needs only 30-45 minutes.
Crown timelines, material by material
A single zirconia crown leaves the lab in 5-7 working days; a night guard in 2-5; a 7-unit span can take 12. Below is where those days go, which ceramic belongs on which tooth, and what a practice must send so the case comes back fitting.
01
Thirty to forty-five minutes on the mill, six to eight hours in the furnace, one day of design, half a day of QC. A week door to door, provided the scan arrives clean.
02
A 4-unit zirconia bridge runs 6-8 working days, a 6- or 7-unit span 8-12, and full-arch or immediate-load cases are quoted at 5-10. Span length, not tooth count alone, sets the schedule.
03
Night guards and bite splints are the fast lane: digitised, printed or vacuum-formed and back in 2-5 working days — provided the 2.5-3 mm of occlusal room was verified before the impression.
A single crown spends under an hour on the mill — the rest of the week is design, sintering and checking.
The machine work is the fast part. A monolithic zirconia crown mills in 30-45 minutes on a 5-axis wet miller, then sinters for 6-8 hours to reach final density and strength. Add finishing, and the hands-on time still fits inside two days.
The quoted 5-7 working days are mostly queue and verification: roughly one full day goes to CAD design — margin marking, emergence profile, occlusion — and about half a day to quality control, where the crown is checked on the model before dispatch.
This is why 'the lab is slow' is often the wrong diagnosis. A case that arrives with a clean scan, a bite registration and a shade reference enters the queue immediately; a case missing any of those waits in an inbox instead of on a bench.
Monolithic zirconia, scan to dispatch. One day of that is CAD design and half a day is QC; the mill itself needs only 30-45 minutes.
A documented framework try-in stretches the schedule but catches fit errors before finishing and before the patient is in the chair.
Zirconia, milled and sintered as one framework. Longer spans need longer sintering schedules and more design time.
The longest routine quote in the zirconia menu; full-arch and immediate-load cases are separately quoted at 5-10 working days.
Digitised, printed or vacuum-formed. The case runs late only when the 2.5-3 mm occlusal clearance was not checked before the impression.
The coping is cast in Ni-Cr or titanium and porcelain is fired in 3-4 cycles at roughly 700-1,000 °C — the slowest line in the lab.
The mill needs forty-five minutes; the week belongs to design, sintering and checking.
Under-reduction is the leading cause of chairside fracture — the preparation chooses the material.
| Restoration | Typical lab time | Longest single step | What makes it run late |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single zirconia crown | 5–7 working days | Sintering, 6–8 hours | Missing bite registration or unreadable margin |
| 4-unit zirconia bridge | 6–8 working days | Framework design and sintering | Under-reduced preparation found at CAD |
| 6–7 unit zirconia span | 8–12 working days | Framework design and sintering | Fit errors caught only at the seat |
| Full-arch / immediate-load case | 5–10 working days | Design and verification | Incomplete records at intake |
| Night guard / bite splint | 2–5 working days | Printing or vacuum-forming | Occlusal room under 2.5–3 mm |
| PFM or full-metal crown | 1–2 weeks | 3–4 porcelain firings at 700–1,000 °C | Casting or firing rework |
The reference points are international standards and manufacturer-independent technical literature, not any one lab's promotional claims.