FAQ
What is CAD/CAM dentistry?
A straight answer first, then the context behind it, from the technicians who do the work.
THE SHORT ANSWER
CAD/CAM dentistry uses computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing to design and mill dental restorations digitally. A clinician or lab captures a digital scan, software builds the restoration geometry, and a milling machine or 3D printer fabricates it from ceramic, zirconia, or resin. The workflow eliminates many manual steps, compresses turnaround from weeks to days, and produces geometry accurate to within microns.
THE CONTEXT
What sits behind it
For a general dentist or prosthodontist sending cases to a lab, CAD/CAM changes what the handoff looks like. Instead of a polyvinyl siloxane impression traveling by courier, an STL file arrives in minutes. The lab's CAD technician designs the crown, bridge, or implant abutment on-screen, reviews contacts and occlusion digitally, and queues it for milling. That design review step is where fit problems get caught before anything is fabricated, not after the patient is in the chair.
Material selection is tightly linked to the CAD/CAM process. Monolithic zirconia, multilayer zirconia, lithium disilicate, and PMMA temporaries each require specific milling parameters, tooling, and sintering cycles. A lab running a calibrated digital workflow treats those parameters as fixed and documented, not variable. That consistency is what keeps remake rates low. Dani Dental's digital workflow routes every milled case through a named technician who owns the file from scan intake through final characterization, so the person signing off on shade and margin knows the case history.
For small DSOs managing 10 to 30 offices, CAD/CAM standardization also solves a coordination problem. When every location submits scans through a single digital portal to one lab, billing, case tracking, and quality review consolidate into one pipeline. Couriers carrying impressions from twelve locations to three different labs is an ops problem CAD/CAM removes entirely.
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This question is one piece of a larger workflow. The pillar page covers materials, turnaround, and how we build the case to your specification.
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