Crystalign Work Flow

We are excited to introduce our Crystalign Work Flow to fabricate more accurately placed teeth for spring aligners and short series of trays for minor adjustments.

In the case of minor relapse following orthodontic treatment or to combat the natural shifting of teeth as we get older, it meant Hawleys with springs or spring aligners with the teeth reset to ideal.

We have been resetting teeth for spring aligners for a long time now. It is really mostly guess work. After we cut the teeth off the model, we place wax down and then align them as best as possible. Stripping is necessary sometimes, but that is as inexact as setting the teeth.

Enter the age of digital orthodontics.

Now, the model can be scanned to create a digital model (or we can accept your scan from your intraoral scanner and create the model using that). The teeth are then segmented, making each tooth a unique object. Finally, the teeth are reset digitally. It is still done manually by a technician in the program but the results are much more accurate.

The program creates a report from the alignment, noting how much each tooth was moved (in degrees or mm) and how much stripping must be done to accomplish the movement. Some labs are recommending the amount of stripping but I prefer to leave that in your hands—the report generated from the movement will also include the values of overlap and the recommended IPR.

From there, we can print the model with the teeth set to ideal or create a series of models to fabricate invisible trays.

The number of trays depends on the amount of movement. An industry “standard” is 2-3 degrees or .2-.3 mm per tray.

Another advantage with digital resets is you can easily check our work, if you wish, before we process the spring aligner or trays. We can create a 3Shape Communicate account for you and send you the models via the Internet. They would be completely 3D enabled, so you can rotate and zoom to examine the final product.

The cost per tray would be $50. The cost for a digitally reset spring aligner would depend on the design.