Evaluation of the Retentive Forces from Removable Partial Denture Clasps Manufactured by the Digital Method

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the retentive forces over time of removable partial denture clasps fabricated by the digital method. Occlusal rest seats were fabricated on three premolar teeth fixed in acrylic blocks (9 × 20 × 40 mm). Digitization of the teeth was performed using a laboratory scanner (Zirkonzahn Scanner S600 GmbH, Gais, Italy). After the analysis and determination of the insertion axis, two types of clasps with mesial occlusal rests were designed per tooth: the back-action and the reverse back-action clasps, using the Partial Planner Zirkonzahn program. The file was sent for fabrication of six metal clasps from a cobalt-chromium SP2 alloy in the EOSINT M270 system by a direct laser sintering process. The Instron 5544 universal testing machine was used to perform 20,000 cycles of clasp insertion and removal in the corresponding tooth with a load cell of 100 N and a speed of 2.5 mm/s. The retentive force was recorded for each of the 1000 cycles, and the change in retention over time was calculated. Statistical analysis was performed using the nonparametric Mann–Whitney test and a significance level of 5%. At 16,000 cycles, a maximum change in retention of 3.74 N was recorded for the back-action clasps and a minimum of −24.28 N at 1000 cycles for the reverse back-action clasps. The reverse back-action clasps exhibited statistically significant lower change in retention than the reverse-action clasps at 4000 and 5000 cycles. No differences were observed in the remaining cycles. During the 20,000 cycles, the change in retention was low regardless of the type of clasp. For most cycles, there were no differences in the change in retention between the two types of clasps.