Discover How One-Visit Crowns Work From Scan To Smile

A crown used to mean two appointments, a mouth full of impression material, and a temporary you’re afraid to bite on. We’re done with that. We walk you through how a same-day crown can be designed and made while you’re still in the chair, and why “faster” doesn’t have to mean “cutting corners.”

We start with the real step-by-step: prepping the tooth comfortably, capturing a precise digital impression with a 3D intraoral scanner, and using that scan to design the crown on a computer. You’ll hear how modern CAD and AI-assisted design help us get the shape started, then how we fine-tune the margins, contacts, and bite so it feels natural. From there, the in-office milling machine carves your crown from a ceramic block, and we finish with polishing, a fit check, and cementation, all in one visit when the case is right.

We also dig into dental materials because “one-visit crown” isn’t one single product. We talk zirconia crowns for strength and long-term shine, lithium silicate when bonding and aesthetics matter, and resin-reinforced ceramics for specific situations where speed and flexibility help. We close with who benefits most from same-day dentistry: busy working patients, anyone who hates temporaries, and people who want fewer injections and fewer trips through traffic.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with someone who’s been putting off a crown, and leave us a review. What part of dental visits do you most want to be faster and more comfortable?

To learn more about Dr. Stephen Blank visit:
https://www.PSLdentist.com
Dr. Stephen Blank, DDS
184 NW Central Park Plaza 
Port St. Lucie, FL, 34986
772-878-7348  

Transcript

Welcome And Big Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the PSL Dentist Podcast, where healthy smiles meet real talk. Hosted by Fort St. Lucie's very own Dr. Stephen Blank, the one dentist who's been making the treasure coast smile for decades. From one-visted crowns to clear aligners, botox, and even lifting threads, yep, your dentist does that too. So sit back, open wide, not literally pleased. And get ready to sink your teeth into today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

A faster crown does not mean a cheaper shortcut. It means smarter technology working in your favor. Welcome back, everyone. Frederick, co-host and producer here in the studio with Dr. Stephen Blank, your Port St. Lucie dentist. Dr. Blank, how's it going today?

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Wonderful, Frederick. It's good to be back with you again.

One-Visit Crown Step By Step

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Excellent. Great to be here with you. So, Dr. Blank, shall we jump right in? Can you please tell us what is the process behind a one-visit crown?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

That's a great question because so many people are just now hearing about that. And they know in the past it was always I had to go to the dentist, and then I had to wait a couple weeks, and I had a temporary crown. I couldn't go out of town, or I was worried about my temporary, and then I had to go back to the dentist and kill time off of work again. So the the one visit crown is a wonderful way to go. In my office, we've been doing them for six years now with a milling machine in-house, right here on property. And for the patient, it's a great procedure. When they come in for their crown work, after we've discussed it and they've agreed that that's what's appropriate, and we schedule the care. Uh, we work on the tooth like we always have. We make it numb so they can be comfortable. And we do, I do my reduction carefully. And when we're finished, we no longer take those rubber goopy impressions. So a lot of patients tell me afterwards, oh, if I knew that, I would have been there sooner. And uh we scan the tooth with a 3D scanner now. Uh it looks like a little um small little camera that just goes in the mouth. Not like your cell phone, smaller. And it records the tooth in three dimensions: the top teeth, the bottom teeth, how they fit together. And then that data is sent across the hall to my laboratory. And in my laboratory, we were used to have plaster bins on the wall and make models out of plaster and stone. Uh, now we have a computer. And that computer designs crowns for me. So it does the artificial intelligence, creates the crown. I go in and detail the edges of it where I want things to finish. I verify the shape of the design so I have complete editing control. The AI gets me started, and then I do the finish. And when I get it where I like the way it looks, the function, the size of the contacts, how one tooth touches another tooth where the floss goes, I get all that lined up and then I send it to the mill. The milling machine takes a block of ceramic, and we have different types of ceramic, different sizes, different colors, um, and it buzzes away the ceramic for about 35 minutes, and when it's finished, the part that's remaining is the crown. It's as simple as that. Um, it's a lot of technology, uh, but it's been worked out over the years where it's become better and better. Uh, from when I first got it to where we are now, the design stages are simpler. The milling speed is even better. So instead of 35-40 minutes, we're finishing in 32 to 35 minutes now. Um, and all I need to do is polish it at the end. Make it smooth, try it in. If the fit is good, the color is good, and it almost always is, uh, in it goes, done. One visit.

Digital Scans Replace Goopy Trays

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Wow, that is amazing. Thank you for that very detailed walkthrough. Uh, I'm sure the viewers really appreciate it. So if you can just go a little bit uh more in depth into this, um, how does digital scanning replace the old school impression trays that patients used to dread?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Well, there's a lot of benefits on that. First, the the old impression trays themselves were two or three sizes and they fit everybody. Well, not really. They mostly fit. They might bump into your gums a little here or there, the top of your mouth, uh, under your tongue. They were a little cumbersome and we don't like using them if we don't have to. So now, gone. We don't do those at all. The scanner is much more small, uh, is smaller, more comfortable, rounded edges. And when I did the rubber impressions, the vinyl polysiloxane VPS we call it, those would go in your mouth and stay for two to three minutes. And you had to sit there a mouthful of stuff in there and the saliva and just a little awkward. Um now when we can do the scanning, I'm typically able to scan uh an arch in 30 seconds. Uh so I do top, bottom, and the bite registrations two or three seconds. That used to be a whole minute of here, bite on this stuff and hold it for a minute. So now that's done three seconds out of there. So it really reduces the time that the patient has things in their mouth. There's nothing in the mouth that's going to go down the throat. There's no rubber goopy stuff that can slide backwards or make you feel that gagging reflex and all. A lot of people tell me that that gagging feeling is one of the reasons they stay away from the dentist. So it's a big, big change. The other part is digital data is collected, and then what I do with it, whether I make the crown in my office or if I send it to a laboratory, it's an exact copy. The way everything digital is. There's no degradation. Uh, the old rubber impressions, if they sat out in the heat too long or travel time, they may not be quite as good. Um, and then they could only use them once. Maybe they could get a second pour out of the plaster. But with the digital ones, we can print a model over and over if it were necessary. I could send it to one lab or send it to a different lab. And it's my data to do what I want. In most cases, they stay in-house, and we're able to do it for the patient while they're here.

How The Milling Machine Works

SPEAKER_01 6:28

That's amazing. So you talked about creating the crown in office, or you have the option to send it to a lab. Can you please walk us through how the in-office milling machine creates the crown?

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Well, the milling machine takes the instructions from the design software. It has the design all finished up. We create the crown, how the little bumps on the top are, the grooves, everything about the anatomy that we want, the stuff we learned our first year in Dell school. It always comes back to us. And then that is packaged up and that project is finished. That's the design software. Then it goes into the milling software. It looks like the same computer, but there's two programs running. And the milling software creates the instructions that tells that milling machine how to buzz on that block of porcelain and remove all the excess, what the shape needs to be. It creates the strategy for what order to go in. And I don't need to know any of that. I just click start and it does it all.

Crown Materials And Strength

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Amazing. So you talked about uh porcelain. Um, so that leads me to my next question. Um, what materials are used for one visit crowns and how do they compare to lab mate options?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Very good question. A lot of people wonder am I getting the same thing? Is this as good as if it went to the laboratory? Well, my laboratory is a laboratory. It's the same materials. I'm using a material called Bruxer now. It's an all-zirconia crown. There's no layering or areas of weakness in it. They're very, very strong. Um, so there's no need for a metal layer. The old crowns we did for years, and I did a ton of them, were uh porcelain baked over metal, but it was a different type of porcelain. There was a little bit more porous, a little bit more rough on the surface. It felt good the day you got it. But as you chewed on it and wore it, they they weren't quite as shiny later on. Uh the zirconia crowns hold their luster and shine very well. And I tell patients you can eat rocks, but your tooth across from that one might not be so happy. But my crown's gonna hold up well. Um the and but that's not the only material we use. I have uh lithium silicate crowns. Uh and we uh well, that's a a different material when we want to bond to the tooth instead of cement to the tooth. And those are good not just for crowns, but if we want to make veneers, we can make something that just covers the front and gets cemented to the front of the tooth or bonded to the front of the tooth without as much tooth reduction. So there's different materials for different purposes. I have resin-reinforced ceramic crowns, and we call those camouflage. And those mill instead of 35 minutes, they'll mill in about six or seven minutes. It's a little softer material, but it's still meant to be a permanent material where I can do either fillings or enlays that cover the top of the tooth or even full crowns. Um, in cases where I need a temporary or a crown that's gonna last, but maybe stronger than a temporary crown, but um the tooth might not be the world's best tooth. So we need to do something less expensive uh for an interim. Uh and and and I always tell patients, it's an interim, but long enough where you might have trouble remembering who made it for you. If it falls out next week, that would be a problem. We want something that's gonna last long enough where patients say, that was a good investment in my health. So we have, and then the other one that I've done a lot of lately uh are temporary crowns. And these I call these biotemps. Um, they're an acrylic resin, but it comes in a block, and we mill the crowns from that. We can mill multiple ones. So if a patient comes in and a tooth broke off at the gum line, something fell out or decay or some crazy reason where they're gonna lose a tooth, uh, I can prepare the tooth on either side for a crown and in the laboratory design a three-tooth bridge. The machine will mill that in about 25 minutes and done. It's much softer than ceramic. So while that's busy milling, we can remove the remaining broken root if that's necessary. And then on the same visit, temporary bridge goes in, covers the extraction site, and they go home with it with the space filled and healing. We're not ready to send it to the laboratory or make a three-tooth bridge in the office because they have to heal. Their gums are going to shrink. There's a hole in their head, literally, right now, and it needs to grow gums. So the temporaries in the compared to what I used to make chair site, and I think I'm pretty good, these are better. They're smoother, they polish well, uh, no air bubbles in them because they're not made in your mouth the old way. We put acrylic in your mouth and it smelled like a nail salon, and it had to harden, and then we trim and grind and have dust all over the place. Uh, and then we try to polish them up. Uh, and this is just better. So technology-driven results are really worth it to the patient.

Who Benefits Most From Same-Day

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Wow. Well, thanks for sharing that. That's such an amazing evolution of technology, processes, and all that. Uh, so in closing, uh, could you please share with us what types of patients or situations benefit most from a same-day crown?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Well, a lot of my patients are working and they don't want to take off two days to get a tooth fixed. If they have to take off on afternoon or a morning to go get their tooth worked on, and they're finished at the end of that visit, they're happy. Two reasons. One, they don't have to drive back and forth in traffic around here is crazy. And the second one, they don't need to be anesthetized twice. If their tooth needs, you know, a little Novocaine, they don't need to do that two times, one time and done. And they don't have that temporary time, and they don't have to go back to their boss and say, I need to go back to the dentist again in next week or two weeks from now uh for that same tooth. So it really expedites things and it it manages the patient's time better. They they don't have to be as time conscious for their dental care.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Amazing, amazing. Well, Dr. Blank, thank you so much for breaking that down so clearly. We do appreciate your insights and for everyone tuning in. We'll see you all in the next episode.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Thank you for the great questions.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

That's a wrap for the PSL Dentist Podcast, where smiles are brighter and laughter always cavity-free. To keep your smile in shape, call 772-878-7348 or visit psldentist.com to schedule your appointment with Dr. Stephen Blank, the one stop doc for smiles, beauty, and everything in between. Until next time, keep flossing, keep smiling, and keep listening.