Dental Technician

Job overview
Dental technicians make dentures, bridges, crowns, fillings and orthodontic apparatus.

They do not perform any work on a patient personally, but receive work from a dentist who takes impressions of patients?' ?oral structures and sends them for the technician to work on.

What do people do in this job?
There are four specialities in dental technology:
Prosthetics covers all facets in the manufacture of full and partial plastic dentures.

Crown and bridge. ?
A crown replaces or adds to the substructure of an existing tooth. ?A bridge comprises more than one unit, normally to replace a missing tooth between existing teeth.

Metal, partial denture frameworks
CrCo and other materials have great stiffness and may be made very thin. ?Instead of a bulky plastic base for a partial denture, a much more comfortable metal frame can sometimes be substituted.

Orthodontics

• Making appliances to straighten crooked teeth, improve poor jaw relations, or prevent bad oral habits that may influence the normal growth of teeth.
• This branch of the profession uses a great variety of materials like metals, polymers, plaster, ceramics and chemicals.
• The rapid advances in dental technology, materials and techniques make this profession particularly exciting for people interested in this field.

What kinds of people are suitable for this job?
Dental technicians need good eyesight, manual dexterity, patience and an artistic “feel?”? for accurate work which results in replacements for parts of a human body.

Those replacements will affect both the health and the appearance of a person and must therefore be as near perfect as possible.

This is a responsible job.

What qualifications are needed?
Good school-leaving results in science subjects plus specific post-school qualifications in dental mechanics, such as City and Guilds certificates.