Dental Tool Technology

Abstract

Dental technology is a discipline of dentistry concerned with the custom manufacture of dental devices to meet the prescription of a dentist. From the earliest times missing teeth have been replaced with dentures or crowns made from a wide variety of materials including gold, human or animal teeth, bone and tusks, and wood. Natural teeth were used for dentures, collected from battlefields, hospitals or by grave diggers, these were mounted in carved dentures of walrus or hippopotamus ivory, or on gold. By the late 18th century dentures fused porcelain teeth were introduced, dentures could be carved from blocks of ivory or carved fixed to a gold plate by gold pins. In the mid-19th century the first artificial denture base materials were introduced, vulcanite (or hard rubber) and celluloid, superseded in the 1940s with the introduction of polymethyl methacrylate. During the 20th century base a wide range of new materials and techniques have been introduced to dentistry, including precision lost wax casting for dental alloys, a wide range of precious metal and base metal alloys, and dental ceramics. This chapter focuses on advences in dental tool technology.