Aurelia Opens Its Digital Design Suite
In-house milling, printing and a ceramist on site
This month we brought the last part of our restorative workflow in-house. The new design suite on Level 9 houses the milling unit, two printers, a furnace and a characterisation bench, with our ceramist working in the same room.
Why it matters
The technically interesting part is the speed: a single crown or onlay can now be designed, milled, characterised, glazed and fitted in one appointment, with no temporary and no second injection.
The part that actually changes outcomes is less obvious. Shade matching is the hardest thing in restorative dentistry, and it has traditionally been done by sending a photograph and a written note to a laboratory several kilometres away.
A ceramist who can walk into the surgery and look at the tooth in daylight produces a different result from one working off a photograph.
Having Hesham, our ceramist, in the building means that when a try-in is not right — and anterior cases frequently are not, first time — the correction happens the same afternoon rather than in a fortnight.
What we still send out
Multi-unit anterior cases in hand-layered feldspathic porcelain still go to our external laboratory for the layering itself, because that work takes days rather than hours and benefits from a dedicated bench.
The difference now is that the design, the trial smile and the shade work all happen here, and the laboratory receives a fully resolved specification rather than a set of instructions.
Practical changes for patients
- Single crowns and onlays are now a single appointment for most cases.
- Trial smiles are printed the same day the design is approved, rather than a week later.
- Night guards, retainers and surgical guides are produced in-house, which has taken about ten days out of every implant case.
The suite is visible from the main corridor through a glass wall, which was deliberate. Patients are welcome to watch their own crown being milled, and a surprising number do.
