A dental impression is a mold of your teeth and surrounding soft tissues. This mold is required for creating custom-fitted dental appliances and restorations, such as crowns, bridges, dentures, clear aligners, retainers, and mouthguards. The duration of the process depends almost entirely on the specific technology your dental provider uses.
Understanding the Two Main Methods
The time it takes to capture a dental impression varies significantly based on whether a physical material or a digital scanner is used. The traditional technique involves placing a tray filled with a soft, putty-like material over the teeth. This material, often alginate or polyvinyl siloxane (PVS), must then undergo a chemical reaction to harden and create a stable, detailed mold.
The duration is dictated by the material’s setting time—the period the tray must remain in your mouth. Alginate, used for preliminary models, sets quickly. PVS, used for final, accurate restorations, provides superior stability but requires a longer setting time. The need to mix the material, load the tray, and wait for the chemical cure makes this a fixed-time procedure.
Digital impressions, conversely, use a small, handheld intraoral scanner to capture the shape of the teeth. This device projects a light source onto the teeth and uses sophisticated software to compile thousands of images into a three-dimensional model. Since there is no physical material to mix or set, the procedure completely eliminates the waiting time associated with a chemical reaction.
The digital method captures data rapidly and displays the virtual model instantly. If an error or gap is detected, the clinician can immediately rescan only the affected area. This saves considerable time compared to redoing a full physical impression, making the digital approach significantly faster.
The Patient Experience Step-by-Step
Regardless of the method used, the impression process begins with preparation to ensure the highest accuracy. The teeth and gums are often dried to remove saliva, which can interfere with both the setting of physical materials and the clarity of digital scans. For traditional impressions, an adhesive may be applied to the tray to help secure the putty-like material to prevent separation upon removal.
With a physical impression, a tray loaded with the mixed material is firmly seated over the arch of teeth and held in place until it completely hardens. The patient is instructed to remain still during this period, which can be challenging for those with a sensitive gag reflex. For digital scanning, the clinician gently guides the wand-like camera across the surfaces of the teeth.
The patient must stay motionless to avoid distorting the final product. Once the physical material is set, the tray is quickly removed. When the digital scan is complete, the image is reviewed instantly on the computer, allowing the clinician to confirm the quality immediately. A physical mold, conversely, requires careful visual inspection.
Total Time Commitment for Impressions
The actual time spent capturing the dental impression is short. Digital scanning time for a single arch (upper or lower teeth) often takes between two to five minutes. Scanning both arches, plus a bite registration to show how they fit together, can often be completed in under ten minutes.
Traditional impressions require a longer commitment due to the necessary chemical setting time of the material inside the mouth. Depending on the specific material used, the physical impression tray must be held in place for approximately five to seven minutes per arch. This means a full set of traditional impressions often requires between 10 to 15 minutes of material setting time.
These timeframes only reflect the impression-taking procedure itself. The overall appointment will be longer, as it includes necessary steps like consultation, preparation of the teeth, and final inspection of the mold or scan. However, the actual impression phase is often completed in a matter of minutes.