Incompatible dental materials can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back when taking an impression.
The simple truth is this: What you don’t know about how labs use an impression can hurt you. If the prep is sent to the lab in a form that is inaccurate or unusable, this can only create more stress for everyone from the patient and dentist to the lab technicians.
Incompatible Dental Materials Lead to Poor Results
So what counts as incompatible in the world of wash and heavy body?
There are quite a few preliminary mistakes that can potentially lead to a dentist using incompatible materials. It could be that a manufacturer was having a sale on the lighter viscosity wash, but not the matching heavy body material. The dentist then purchases only the sale item and ends up with the wash from one manufacturer and heavy body from another.
Another scenario might be that you’re taking an impression and realize you’re running out of the wash you normally pair with a certain heavy body material. It seems like an easy fix to simply use some of the extra wash you have lying around that doesn’t come from the same manufacturer as the heavy body…
In both cases, you end up with an unexpected problem. Wash and heavy body that do not come from the same manufacturer may have chemistry that does not function well together.
The result? The wash and heavy body may not bond. If this happens, the lab cannot use it. Not only that, but the impression may not set.
It keeps getting worse, though. The colors of compatible wash and heavy body material are normally different enough that they can be distinguished from one another.
If the materials come from different manufacturers, the colors may be too similar. This limits the lab’s ability to determine the accuracy of the impression.
Learn more about the best ceramic materials to use in your dental practice.