Going for the Gold?

On the left is the older allow, on the right the new one that my lab has chosen to use

The cost of a penny weight of pure gold is currently $79.53. The cost of a penny weight of pure palladium is $130.6. It used to be that palladium was added instead of gold to the precious metals often used for pfms, but now laboratories are finding that palladium is no longer affordable. The lab that I am using has just changed the formulation of the metal it's using to one that has more gold than palladium. I really do not mind, but metals with more gold are softer and often easier for a dentist to accidentally polish off delicate margins. It is important when polishing "higher gold" formulations to exert less hand pressure when performing the final polishing of the crown's margins. Other wise there should be no problem with this change.

Traditionally labs have chosen alloys with higher gold percentages for optimal esthetics, since alloys with higher concentrations of gold can exhibit less "greening". Greening is caused by the vaporization of silver in castings after firing in the porcelain oven. Higher Gold alloys usually have a lower concentration of silver.

from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2020/03/going-for-gold.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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