Patent ID: 8280542

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a dental crown from a wax material, comprising: a) displaying on a monitor screen of computer aided design equipment an image of a proposed dental crown based, at least in part, on collected three dimensional digital data corresponding to surfaces of one or more teeth of a patient, b) with the aid of said computer aided design equipment, modifying said image so that said image displayed on the monitor screen substantially corresponds to the dental crown to be manufactured, c) collecting the three dimensional digital data substantially corresponding to said image of the dental crown to be manufactured and transmitting said three dimensional digital data of said image of the dental crown to be manufactured to automated prototyping equipment, d) using the automated prototyping equipment to make a wax material pattern of the dental crown to be manufactured based upon said three dimensional digital data substantially corresponding to said image of the dental crown to be manufactured; e) obtaining an adjusted pattern formed by manually adding additional wax to said wax material pattern of said dental crown to compensate for a configuration of the surfaces corresponding to the dental structure on which the dental crown is to be placed; and f) fabricating the dental crown based on the adjusted pattern.