A few weeks back, I received this product to help me remove crowns more easily from a friend who is a rep with a dental instruments company. It is called the WAMkey. They showed me how to use it at the ADA, but I was a bit skeptical. I’m a bit hesitant to try it on a bonded crown, but decided to try it on a cemented PFM that I was removing last month. It was awesome! No more cutting a trench buccal to lingual on the crown. No more nicking the buccal and lingual tissue and making a big groove from drilling in too deep on the buccal and lingual. I removed a gold crown today. Let me show you how this works.
Here is the kit. There are three WAMkeys; each is slightly larger in size.
I had a gold crown that had recurrent decay under it.
They give you a bur that easily cuts through metal and porcelain. You make a window in the crown and advance the bur into the crown along the cement/crown.
The smallest WAMkey is placed into the window and twisted. The cement seal breaks and the crown lifts right up.
Neither the prep nor the tissue had big gouges on them from making a trench cut from buccal to lingual.
Here is the crown with just the small window in it.
I have just been using this a few months, but I am really enjoying it.