Making a set of dentures typically takes five to six dental appointments spread over several weeks, with detailed work happening both in the dental chair and in a laboratory behind the scenes. The process combines precise molds of your mouth, careful jaw measurements, a wax trial run, and a final conversion into durable acrylic. Each step builds on the last, and understanding the sequence helps explain why dentures can’t be rushed.
Taking Impressions of Your Mouth
The process starts with impressions, which are physical molds of your gums and the bony ridges where teeth once sat. If you still have teeth that need removal, those come out first, and your ridges are given time to heal and reshape before any molds are taken.
At the first impression appointment, your dentist uses a soft, quick-setting material (usually alginate, the same paste used for orthodontic molds) pressed into a tray that fits over your upper or lower arch. This creates a rough model of your mouth, which the lab uses to build a custom-fitted tray just for you. That custom tray comes back for a second, more precise impression using a thinner material that captures surface detail down to lines narrower than a human hair. This level of accuracy matters because even tiny gaps between a denture and your gums cause discomfort and poor suction.
Recording How Your Jaws Meet
Once the lab has accurate models of your ridges, the next appointment focuses on your bite. Your dentist places wax blocks on plastic bases shaped roughly like dentures and asks you to bite down gently. These wax rims let the dentist measure two things that shape how your dentures will look and function: the vertical height of your bite and the alignment between your upper and lower jaws.
Getting the vertical height right is surprisingly important for your appearance. If dentures are too tall, your face can look stretched or permanently startled. Too short, and your cheeks and lips lose support, creating a sunken look. The dentist adjusts the wax until your facial proportions look natural and your jaws close comfortably. These measurements, along with the shaped wax rims, go to the lab so technicians know exactly where to position each tooth.
Choosing the Teeth
Denture teeth are individual prefabricated pieces set into the base, and they come in two main materials: acrylic resin and porcelain. Most modern dentures use acrylic teeth because they’re lighter, easier to adjust, and bond chemically to the acrylic base. Porcelain teeth are harder and more resistant to wear, but they can produce a noticeable clicking sound when the upper and lower sets tap together. They’re also more brittle and can chip if dropped.
One important rule in tooth selection is consistency. Mixing porcelain teeth on one arch with acrylic on the opposing arch creates uneven wear. The softer acrylic grinds down faster, throwing off the bite over time and putting pressure on the ridges beneath. Your dentist selects tooth size, shape, and shade to match your facial features, skin tone, and any remaining natural teeth if you’re getting a partial denture.
The Wax Try-In
Before anything is made permanent, the lab sets the chosen teeth into a wax version of the denture mounted on a temporary base. This try-in appointment is your chance to see what the final result will look like and how it feels when you bite down. Because the teeth are still held in soft wax, it’s easy to reposition a tooth, change the angle of a front tooth for a more natural appearance, or adjust how the upper and lower sets come together.
Some patients need two try-in visits to get everything right. This is the most cost-effective point to make changes, since once the denture is converted to hard acrylic, adjustments become much more limited.
Converting Wax to Acrylic
This is where the lab work gets intensive. The approved wax try-in goes through a process called flasking: the wax denture is encased in plaster inside a two-part metal flask, creating a mold. The flask is then placed in boiling water, which melts and flushes out all the wax while leaving the denture teeth locked in position within the plaster. What remains is a hollow space in the exact shape of the denture base.
Technicians pack that space with acrylic resin, specifically polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), the same family of plastic used in shatterproof glass and medical implants. PMMA is popular for dentures because it’s lightweight, doesn’t react with saliva or food, bonds securely to the artificial teeth, and can be color-matched to look like natural gum tissue. The packed flask is then cured in a heated water bath, typically at around 75°C for several hours followed by a shorter period at 95°C. This slow heating allows the liquid resin to harden into a solid, durable base.
One challenge during curing is shrinkage. Acrylic resin contracts as it hardens, with final shrinkage ranging from about 6% to 9% by volume. Labs minimize this by using a powder-and-liquid mixing technique where pre-hardened acrylic granules are blended with liquid resin, so only the liquid portion shrinks. Even so, some minor fit adjustments are almost always needed at delivery.
Finishing and Delivery
After the cured denture is removed from the flask, lab technicians trim excess material, smooth the edges, and polish the entire surface. The pink base is shaped to mimic the natural contours of gum tissue, including subtle texturing that makes the denture look realistic.
At the delivery appointment, your dentist seats the finished denture and checks three things: fit against the ridges, the way upper and lower teeth meet, and overall appearance. Minor adjustments with a small rotary tool are common at this stage, relieving pressure spots on the inside surface or fine-tuning how the teeth contact each other. Most people need one to three follow-up adjustment appointments over the next few weeks as they adapt to wearing the dentures and as sore spots reveal themselves during actual eating and speaking.
Immediate Dentures: A Faster Path
If you need teeth extracted and don’t want to go without teeth during healing, immediate dentures offer an alternative. Impressions and jaw records are taken while your natural teeth are still in place. The lab works from those molds, trimming the teeth off the plaster model and sculpting the denture base to fit the ridges as they’ll look after extraction.
On the day of surgery, teeth are removed and the pre-made denture is inserted right away. The tradeoff is fit. Because no one can perfectly predict how gums and bone will reshape during healing, immediate dentures almost always need relining. A soft liner cushions the inside surface during the first weeks while tissues change. Once healing stabilizes, usually after several months, the denture is relined with hard acrylic or a new conventional denture is made using the fully healed ridges.
Digital and 3D-Printed Dentures
Newer digital workflows are changing parts of this process. Instead of pouring plaster models, some clinics use intraoral scanners to create a 3D digital map of the mouth. Denture bases and teeth can then be designed on a computer and either milled from a solid block of acrylic or 3D printed layer by layer.
Milled dentures are currently the more accurate digital option, achieving fit precision around 65 micrometers (roughly the width of a fine human hair). 3D-printed dentures are slightly less precise, varying more between labs, but still fall within a clinically acceptable range and match the accuracy of conventionally made dentures. Both digital methods tend to be faster since they skip several manual lab steps. The clinical appointments, however, remain similar: you still need impressions or scans, bite records, and a try-in before the final product is delivered.