Tie Dye Retainer Design

I had a dental lab technition from Iran email and ask me how I made my Tie Dye retainers. I wrote down some instructions on how we do that design here in our lab with a promise that I had some video of the procedure somewhere on my hard drive. Well here you go Farid! Hope this help explain my written instructions better.

Here are the writtten instructions for the design process:

1. Choose 3-4 acrylic colored powders.
2. Start on one half of the model
3. take one of the colored powders and make a 4-5 mm wide line along the lingual of the teeth
4. do not wet with the monomer yet!
5. take the next colored powder and make another 4-5mm line next to the last color
6. keep going until you have a half rainbow on the palate of the mouth.
7. take the monomer and carefully wet the powder just enough so the the colors do not run together
8. take a thick piece of Ortho wire and drag it throughout the wet acrylic from the palate to the teeth, so that it drags one color into the other.
9. I usually drag 2-3 times in one spot to really pull one color into the other
10. about 5 drag lines per side of the mouth looks good
11. then cover the new, wet design with clear powder to soak up the excess monomer.
12. do the other side
13. Cure, finish and polish like usual.

Practice, Practice, Practice!!!!