Sometimes you can just bask in the glory of a case that is just flying along with great results. The stars align and time passes and the work just gets done and done beyond your expectations. Then all of a sudden things come to a screeching halt. Something happens that can threaten the entire process. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does its best to take a deep breath and draw deep upon your accumulated knowledge and training and push past the glitch to get the job done.

Today I was designing an implant crown on a central. The implant was placed pretty deep and while tougher to work with, the soft tissue looked great and we still had intact papilla on each side. The fixture level impression progressed nicely into a soft tissue model which was scanned and the design went very smoothly. Then right when I hit mill and was getting ready to walk away from the machine... Bam a potential day changer occurred.

At first glance, that amount of the restoration hanging out of a size 14 emax block looked like too much to handle. Was this going to be one that was going off to the lab? If so, I was going down with a fight.  It did take quite a while playing with the move and rotate tools on various sprue positions. At times, it seemed like it would be impossible to get it to work, but then just the right combination of events and things just fell into place. Here is the result.

Tight but it all worked out well.

So, what were my options if this case could not move forward. Well, it isn’t a Sirona Connect case as I had already taken a fixture level impression and dismissed the patient. Physically sending the model to the lab would be a definite option but the Lab cost would drive me crazy. Getting most of the red out and milling anyway is an option as well. The software will tell you that the restoration does not fit in the block and will ask if you want to proceed anyway. Then you can add porcelain to make up for the shy area. Incorporating that into a cutback would be a nice way to go. By far the best option would be to fabricate a custom abutment using the InLab software. Raise the margin to where you want it to be and then design the crown.

So as you can see, there were plenty of options. I got lucky and one of the simplest ways worked. The important thing to realize is that you always have options with CEREC. Sometimes you just need to take a step back, take a deep breath and think. The answer will usually become clear to you. If not, the cerecdoctors.com/discussion-boards are the best source for information in the world. See you there.