Pre-Coating Ti Bases, A Non-Negotiable!

Intra-oral pick-up of Tibases depends on the pick-up material completely encasing the Ti base and engaging the undercuts.  This can be tricky!  One little tip I learned from Dr Kenneth Kurtz is to pre-polymerize the parts prior to pick-up.  The benefit to this is that you've added pick-up material around the Ti base in a clean and controlled environment, perfectly engaging the undercuts.  Then, with the parts in place, ready for pick-up, the pick-up material need not engage undercuts, but simply make contact with the pre-polymerized material on the Ti bases.  Check out this photo as evidence of this principle:

You see that Ti base second from the right?  There is less than 50% coverage of the pick-up material of the Ti base?  Without precoating, this Ti base would not have picked up inside the denture, and even if it had, it would not have been stable.  However, there is a thin layer of pre-polymerized acrylic around that Ti base.  Because I had precoated the Ti bases, all four of those Ti bases picked up and were rock solid stable!  Pre coating is a MUST!  Here is an easy way to pre-coat the Smart Denture Conversion Ti Bases with a thin and uniform coat: