Novel and Sustainable Auto-Mix Delivery System for Dental Compositions

Objectives: The aim of the study was to compare different state of the art temporary cements offered in an Auto-Mix system with a new 3M Oral Care temporary cement in a new 3M Auto-Mix delivery system (EXP Cement) in respect of waste and extrusion force. All these systems generate a certain amount of paste and plastic waste with each application. Sustainability is an important goal today. Due to the static mixer and in some cases direct intra oral delivery, extrusion force is an important parameter that influences the application and precision.
Methods: 12 Different cements were used for the study. Waste was determined by weight. Weighting an empty mixer and weighting a used static mixer. Calculate the wasted material in the mixer by the difference. Also the plastic waste was compared using the weight of an empty mixer (n=5).
Extrusion force measurement was done by force measurement on a universal testing machine at the same volume flow rate.
Results: The plastic waste of the new EXP syringe mixing tip is 366±1mg whereas the minimal plastic waste of the other Auto-Mix mixing tips is 993±2mg. The cement waste in the static mixer of the EXP cement is 58±2mg whereas the minimal cement waste of the other Auto-Mix syringes is 224±3mg.
The maximum extrusion force of the EXP Cement is 23.6±1.6N whereas the minimal extrusion force of the other cements is 35.8±1.7N.
Conclusions: The EXP cement syringe mixing tip produces at least 3.9 times less cement waste than the other temporary cements tested. The plastic waste is at least 2.7 times less.
The EXP cement has significantly lower extrusion forces compared to the other Cements.