Dental technologists often make dentures, or similarly, prostheses that are primarily intended to replace a patient’s natural or missing teeth. Thus, dental technicians make full resin dentures (commonly called dentures), partial dentures (which are metal or are made of resin), bridges and crowns of any kind (fixed dentures, also called implants), and mixed dentures. On the other hand, dental technicians make all removable orthodontic appliances (removable dentures), dental splints, individual impressions, temporary resin dentures, bite plates, as well as study casting models. Dental technologists are also responsible for making composites (repairing dentures if they break) and refinishing (re-adjusting dentures when they are too large or thin in the mouth due to resorption of the alveolar bone over time). All that, with regard to plaster models or trained models, is an offense affecting the patient’s mouth. In every country that legally regulates the dental technician profession, the industrial technician is the only professional trained and legally authorized to manufacture the aforementioned products.
By law, dental technicians can never, even under a prescription, take impressions of teeth – the dentist is legally responsible for this, and the penal code considers it an intrusive offense if the dentist touches a patient’s mouth.
