Article:

Fabricating quality anterior esthetic restorations, such as porcelain veneers and crowns, requires the fabrication of a soft tissue definitive cast with removable dies and a hard stone gingiva. This cast is essential to the integration of the definitive restoration with the architecture of the gingiva. It is obtained by repositioning a set of dies (trimmed as a root form with antirotation grooves) into the definitive impression, and subsequently pouring a solid base. This so-called “alveolar cast” (cast base with alveolar sockets) is not a substitute for another important cast, the solid cast, which is obtained from a single pour of the definitive impression, trimmed and mounted in an articulator.