Intraoral scanner
A handheld wand builds a 3D model of your teeth in about ninety seconds. It replaced the tray of putty that sets in your mouth for four minutes while you try not to gag, and it is more accurate as well.
The equipment does
the boring part.
Not gadgets for the website. Each of these removes a step that patients used to hate, and we can tell you exactly which one.
If a piece of equipment does not remove a step, we did not buy it.
In-house milling unit
Your crown is milled from a solid ceramic block while you have a coffee across the road. It replaced a two-week wait, a plastic temporary and a second appointment with a second injection.
CBCT 3D imaging
Low-dose 3D imaging so implant position, bone volume and nerve proximity are known rather than estimated. It replaced surgical guesswork and, more often than people expect, it replaces the surgery entirely by showing there is not enough bone.
Digital smile design
The proposed result is rendered onto a photograph of your own face before you agree to anything. It replaced "trust me" — and it has talked as many people out of cosmetic work as into it.
Laser soft-tissue unit
Gum contouring and small soft-tissue procedures with less bleeding, fewer sutures and a considerably shorter recovery. It replaced the scalpel for a specific and fairly narrow set of jobs.
Digital radiography
Sensors rather than film, at roughly a fifth of the radiation dose, with the image on the ceiling screen a second later. It replaced the chemical developer and the trip to a darkroom mid-appointment.
Honest limits
What the technology does not do
Digital dentistry is a set of better tools, not a different profession. A scan does not diagnose anything; it records a shape. A milling unit does not decide whether a tooth should be crowned. A CBCT does not tell you whether an implant is the right answer for a person who grinds their teeth at night.
Every decision here is still made by a dentist looking at a whole mouth and a whole person, and the most common thing we say at a first appointment is that the right treatment is less than what someone was expecting.
Where we still use a laboratory
- Front teeth where shade matching matters more than speed
- Full-arch cases and complex bite rebuilds
- Anything with a deep gum-level margin
- Dentures, which remain a craft skill and always will
Radiation, plainly
A digital bitewing is roughly the dose you get from a day of normal background radiation. A CBCT scan is more — comparable to a few weeks of background — which is why we take one only when it will change what we do, and never routinely.
Curious rather than committed?
Book the new patient examination. Scan included, plan in writing, no treatment booked on the day.