Case Planning with PRO-Craft Dental Laboratory

Dental Shades

Shade choices can either make or break a case, especially when matching a single tooth in the anterior region. We offer you many shade guides to follow and routinely utilize the VITA® Shade Guide, Bioform® IPN Shade Guide, and Illumine White Shades (Dentsply).

Lighting is a significant factor when choosing the correct shade. We recommend relying on overhead indirect natural lighting rather than conventional operatory lighting. Please call us for a reference vendor that we feel provides the best natural lighting. PRO-Craft’s entire dental lab facility is equipped with lighting that reproduces 95% of the color spectrum of natural light. In addition, your operatory décor and furnishings should be limited to neutral colors with no predominate bright colors. The best way to communicate your shade requirements to your dental lab is to send photos with the requested shade tabs next to the patient’s dentition.

Pre-operative, during fabrication, and post-operative photography is a great way to document each case and to also use as a personal practice marketing tool. While there are many different approaches to dental photography, we have compiled the following guidelines to assist you:

Make sure your patient is sitting upright, or standing, and shoot the picture horizontally level.
When taking full-face, smile, and retracted shots, please make sure your patients keep their teeth closed together.
Remember to include the stump shade (for all ceramic restorations) and shade tabs in the picture for communicating shade requirements.
When taking anterior clinical shots, manual focus on the lateral teeth instead of utilizing the auto focus for clear, concise shots.

The 3-step TRIAD Diagnostic Wax-up process saves you time and money. Let your patient test drive their final dental restorations with our TRIAD Diagnostic Wax-ups.

We recommend this product be used before cosmetically enhancing a patient’s smile. Benefits for your patient include:

- Coordinated planning with the patient, dentist and dental lab technician.
- Eliminate patient guesswork
- Fabricate your chairside temps using our FREE temporary matrix.
- Free prep guide included
- Increased patient satisfaction and case acceptance

Learn more about PRO-Craft's TRIAD Diagnostic Wax-up, it's characteristics, and benefits here.

Take Your Esthetics To The Next Level with the Ladder

THE LADDER is a pictorial display of meticulously and painstakingly crafted digital images on laminated archival photographic paper, allowing for multiple reproductions of identical references. These images are categorized, color-coded by category, and encoded for reference.

Reproducing features of tooth characterization are made simple --- without the need for expensive technology, time consuming schematics, or loss or productive time for the dentist and ceramist. THE LADDER standardizes features of tooth characterization in a comprehensive and user-friendly format so that restorations can be accurately fabricated for the satisfaction of all patients, essentially eliminating the need for esthetic remakes. It is a must for esthetic practice.

Creating life-like restorations is both challenging and rewarding because there is more to tooth appearance than shade. Diagnosing these features was difficult before the Ladder; communicating these features and details was time consuming and often inadequate before the Ladder; and fabricating esthetic restorations was sometimes a hit and miss proposition before the Ladder.

PRO-Craft Dental Lab's Fundamentals of Excellence

PRO-Craft Dental Lab leads the industry with our Fundamentals of Excellence. Your dental restorations are created in a state-of-the-art facility, which enables us serve clients in the fastest and most consistent way possible. All PRO-Craft products are are also made right here in the U.S.A. To set your practice up for long-term success, our team is here to support and help you with anything you may need.

Learning Center

December 05, 2024

Custom vs. Stock Abutments: Which Is Right for Your Dental Implant?

Choosing the right abutment impacts the success and aesthetics of any dental implant. Abutments connect a dental prosthetic, such as a crown, and the implant post anchored in the jawbone. They are...

October 29, 2024

How to Avoid Common Dental Impression Errors

Accurate impressions are the foundation for successful bridges, crowns, or dentures, but multiple factors can impact accuracy. However, we have the solutions to the most common dental impression...

Greg and Dylan Schubert talk about dental crown fit

October 24, 2024

Mastering Dental Crown Impressions: Tips for Better Dental Crown Fitting

Hello there, dear dentist friends! Dylan here from PRO-Craft Dental Laboratory. How well are your crowns fitting your patients? Finding a national dental lab partner who can create dental...

Case Planning with Your Dental Lab