Today we’re going to go through the processes involved in placing your braces. We will show you how the braces and the bands are fitted to the teeth and we’ll give you an overview of the most common elements that we use when getting braces to straighten your teeth.
- Bands
Not every patient will have bands on their back or molar teeth. These are metal rings that are fitted around the teeth. If we’re going to use these, we will have placed separators or spaces a week before your braces go on to create small gaps between the back teeth to enable the bands to fit on the teeth.
- Fit the rings to the teeth
Then what we would do is to fit the appropriate size rings to the teeth, place glue in those rings, and then fit them snugly over the teeth. They have to be really well-fitting. Once the braces are placed, we tidy up any of the glue that’s excess around the place. Generally speaking, we will use a blue light that cures the glue so that you can walk out and eat as soon as the appointment is over. This is a non-painful process and involves putting some glue into some rings and putting the rings on your back teeth.
- Place the braces on the front teeth
The next process that would be carried out is the placement of braces on the front teeth. The way in which this is done is that the teeth are dried and glue is placed on the surface of the teeth with a paintbrush then the braces with glue. Excess glue is removed and then we use again a blue light that makes that glue sit in three to six seconds. There are a lot of braces to place. But each one doesn’t take very long at all. That’s how the braces are placed on your teeth.
- The components of braces
Finally, we shall go through the components of your mouth full of braces. You will see the little colored rubber bands that hold the wires in place and this also will illustrate some other features such as elastic bands on your teeth, springs, little posts for the rubber bands to be worn to, etc.
The components to your braces certainly are the braces themselves, sometimes called a bracket, which as we’ve just demonstrated to you are glued onto the surface of your teeth. Between all of these will run a wire and the wire is held in place with little rubber bands, which can be multiple colors should you so desire. Sometimes we tie the wire in place with a little steel wire instead for more security. Sometimes we use little crimpable hooks on the teeth and therefore the wearing of rubber bands between the top and the bottom teeth in particular.
There are other sorts of appliances that are used to carry rubber bands and the rubber bands we use to change the way the upper and lower teeth bite together. A chain is a daisy chain of single rubber bands that we use to close up gaps around the place. We might create space using springs on your teeth.
As we’ve already stated sometimes the back teeth will have metal rings on them called bands but not in every patient. There’s an overview of the sorts of things that will be used to straighten your teeth. There’s the braces, wires, little rubber bands, larger rubber bands that you change yourself. There are metal rings on the back teeth and a variety of other little posts and springs and devices that are used so that we can get you straight teeth as swiftly and comfortably as possible.
