January - LVI Visions

It is very important that the ceramist is always involved in the design of the
copings. Do not leave it to whoever does the waxing or scanning. Basically, the
build up starts from here so if something goes wrong, do not blame it on them.
It is the ceramist’s fault if they do not do the design themselves!
Introducing
CALLAPLUS CERAMIC - TREATMENT
I have been a ceramist for quite a while, long enough and experienced
enough to be able to tell the difference between natural dentition and very
well-matched restorations. Going through dental magazines or books, I see
many great restorations but often it is fairly obvious which one is a restoration.
Regardless of how much I train myself to reproduce nature, there is one thing
I just can not control. This is the “micro bubbles” within the porcelain which
tend to appear on the surface of the finished restorations (Figure 26). Worst of
all, this becomes more obvious when polishing after the glaze firing and just
before we finish the job and send it out (the courier is usually pacing the reception
area by now and giving me dirty looks!). Once I see these tiny bubbles
on the surface, I get very upset. My eyes just lock in on them and the restoration
does not look like a tooth to me anymore! It may sound like I am being
very fussy, but it is a serious issue for me.
Natural dentition has very smooth dense layers regardless of the surface anatomy
(Figure 27). It is very annoying to try and get rid of a tiny bubble on a finished
restoration that you have spent so much time creating. I have tried to fix this problem
by condensing the porcelain prior to firing, mixing the porcelain to get rid of
any visible bubbles under the microscope or making sure the porcelain is constantly
wet to avoid wet-dry-wet build-up. I even tried many different firing cycles.
However, nothing seemed to work; I still had those tiny little bubbles which drove
me insane!
Finally I found a solution - the CALLAplus Ceramic treatment (the first in
Australia) from German company TeamZiereis GmbH (Figure 24).
Instead of hand mixing the porcelain powder on a plate, you simply put the
porcelain powder and the liquid together in to the glass container of the
CALLAplus and turn it on. It then sucks the air out of the container and once
you get a full vacuum, you turn the built-in vibrator on. In 30-60 seconds (the
time can be varied), you get bubble free porcelain paste! Figure 25 shows the
amount of air that comes out of the porcelain paste. Scary!
Figure 28 shows the surface of a crown built with the bubble-free porcelain.
This is a dream come true. The advantages of the CALLAplus ceramic treatment
include:
1. You can use any type of porcelain powder and re-use the dried out porcelain
as if it is brand new again (The glass container comes with a lid, so make
sure you put the lid on when you are not using the porcelain to avoid having
dust in it)
Figure 21
Figure 22
Figure 23
Figure 24
Figure 25
LVI VISIONS • JANUARY • FEBRUARY • MARCH • APRIL 2008 45