Bond Aligner™

Editor’s intro: Bond Aligner™ bonding for attachments offers more reliable results, improved practice efficiency, increased satisfaction, and less frustration during clear aligner therapy. 

Solution: Bonding attachments to clear aligners

Stainless steel buttons bonded to aligner

Years in development, Bond Aligner™ was specifically designed to address the inability to bond to clear aligners. Recognizing that weak link in the adhesive world, we felt we could offer a definitive answer. The lack of the ability to bond to clear aligners has been a huge detriment and frustration for clinicians reducing the number and types of cases that can be treated with clear aligners and the ability to facilitate optimal treatment outcomes. Treatment planning and setup as well as clinical troubleshooting are critical to getting optimal results with CAT. To this end, products like Bond Aligner™, developed by Reliance Orthodontic Products, in conjunction with Dr. Laurel Martin, are being designed to address the inability to bond to clear aligners.

Sandblasting or roughening up the surface of the aligner was attempted as an early solution to address bonding to clear aligners.

With Bond Aligner™, clinicians have the convenience of simply applying this adhesive to the base of any desired auxiliary, placing it on the aligner, and light curing. No matrix preparation or primers are necessary. The newest technology provides an even more esthetic solution for intraoral buttons. By removing metal buttons from the equation, the patient’s smile will disclose only clear material. This is achieved by simply filling a silicone mold that will produce a retentive button once polymerized.

This adhesive has several unique characteristics. The most important, however, is a low modulus of elasticity within the resin matrix allows the retainer to be twisted and flexed without the bond failing. After the auxiliary is light cured, the bond strength of Bond Aligner™ is such that the auxiliary is often difficult to remove. A button, cured to the surface of an aligner with Bond Aligner™, generally needs to be removed with a dental handpiece and bur. Bond Aligner™ will adhere to most clear thermoplastic aligner materials.

Before Bond Aligner™, it was often necessary to make cuts or remove small sections of an aligner to allow for the bonding of an auxiliary directly to a tooth surface. As a detrimental consequence of those reliefs, the mechanical integrity of the aligner is compromised at the cutaway site resulting in a weak spot in the aligner. In addition, the reduction in adaptation of the aligner to a tooth adversely impacts the biomechanical forces at the site relieved, reducing the aligner’s ability to facilitate tooth movement and function properly. Finally, unwanted movement can occur at the tooth being used as an anchorage site. All of the above are reasons for the need to bond to an aligner rather than directly to a tooth to achieve the tooth-moving forces that are wanted and to eliminate those that are not.

Aligner attachments with elastics to TADs

When minor tooth movement is desired to fine-tune an aligner case, small dimples are often placed in an aligner using dimpling pliers. Filling retention dimples with Bond Aligner™ will reinforce the detail dimple, thus preventing collapse and optimizing the movement achievable with those dimples. By placing those dimples in the aligner at tooth undercuts interproximally, the dimples can also be used to increase retention of an aligner. Again, Bond Aligner™ can be used to back up this function.

The ability to bond auxiliaries to aligner materials results in more optimal reliable CAT, not to mention fewer emergency visits as a consequence of debonding of auxiliaries. Difficult movements with aligners are now possible with more reliable results including, but not limited to, single tooth intrusion, segmental intrusion, anterior/posterior arch coordination, root uprighting, anterior extraction, posterior extraction, posterior intrusion, and even full arch intrusion. The end result is improved practice efficiency and increased satisfaction for both the clinician and the patient.

This information was provided by Reliance Orthodontic Products.

Besides bonding for attachments, Reliance Orthodontic Products, Inc. offers many other excellent products for orthodontists. Read about Extend™ LTR, lingual retention that allows for chairside wire selection and placement with no lab lead time and no lab costs.

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