Digital scanning replaces the putty tray
Traditional impressions use a tray of putty that many patients find unpleasant, and the physical material can distort slightly as it sets, gets disinfected, and travels to a laboratory. Every distortion risks a crown that needs adjusting or remaking.
A digital intraoral scanner captures your teeth as a precise 3D file in minutes. The clinician can check the scan on screen immediately, rescan a single area if needed, and send the file straight to the laboratory without physical handling.
Designing the crown on screen
Once the scan is captured, the crown is designed digitally, matching the shape, contact points and bite of the tooth it replaces. This stage is where fit and function are largely decided, well before any material is milled.
Milling and finishing
The design file is sent to a CAD/CAM milling unit, which shapes the crown from a solid block of zirconia or a lithium disilicate ceramic such as e.max. Depending on the material, the crown then goes through sintering, staining and glazing to reach its final strength, shade and translucency.
Why an in-house laboratory matters
Many clinics send crown work to an external laboratory, sometimes in another city or country, which adds days or weeks of turnaround. When a clinic mills and finishes restorations on site, the ceramist can see your actual shade and bite in person, and adjustments can happen the same day rather than after another shipping cycle.
For patients travelling for treatment on a limited number of days, this difference is often what decides whether treatment finishes within a single trip.
What this means at Dentalmed
At Dentalmed, crowns are designed, milled and finished in our own in-house laboratory in Tirana, so the technicians shaping your restoration work alongside the clinicians who examined you. That keeps quality control in one place, from the first scan to the final polish.