Firing temperature accuracy of four dental furnaces

In spite of using recommended firing and displayed temperatures, low-fired dental porcelain more often demonstrates unsatisfactory results after firing than porcelain fired at higher temperatures. It could therefore be anticipated that temperatures shown on the display are incorrect, implying that the furnace does not render correct firing programs for low-fired porcelain. The purpose of this study is to investigate deviations from the real temperature during the firing process and also to illustrate the service and maintenance discipline of furnaces at dental laboratories. Totally 20 units of four different types of dental furnaces were selected for testing of temperature accuracy with usage of a digital temperature measurement apparatus, Therma 1. In addition,the staffs at 68 dental laboratories in Sweden were contacted for a telephone interview on furnace brand and on service and maintenance program performed at their laboratories. None of the 20 different dental furnaces in the study could generate the firing temperatures shown on the display, indicating that the hypothesis was correct. Multimat MCII had the least deviation of temperature compared with displayfigures. 62 out of 68 invited dental laboratories chose to participate in the interviews and the result was that very few laboratories had a service and maintenance program living up to quality standards. There is room for improving the precision of dental porcelain furnaces as there are deviations between displayed and read temperatures during the different steps of the firing process.