We have recently launched CAP FZ, a highly esthetic full contour zirconia crown.  One of the key attributes that makes this material look so great is its superior translucency.  I hear a lot of discussion about having to trade off translucency for strength with zirconia.  CAP FZ has flexural strength of 1100 megapascals, and relative to other materials on the market, this is plenty of strength.  Now, I’m a very data-driven person, so I like numbers a lot, but I found it hard to understand what 1100 megapascals really means in the real world.

I had recently seen an interesting test involving a hammer and a couple of crowns, so I was inspired to run a similar test on CAP FZ  just to get a feel for its strength.  I shot a quick video with CAP team members who hit PFM and CAP FZ crowns with a hammer on a 2×4 board.  As you probably guessed, the PFM broke apart.  The CAP FZ crown, however, just drove straight into the board and came out completely unscathed. After showing the video to a few people, someone said they thought we hit the PFM harder than CAP FZ, giving it an unfair advantage.   I took this comment as a challenge, and decided that I need to modify the test as follows: drop heavy object onto each crown from the same height in order to deliver a consistent force each time.  So, this weekend, I grabbed my 17 lb sledgehammer and went into the office, marked the wall at 2.5 feet, and went to town on some crowns!