Same-Day Crowns with CEREC: How Chairside CAD/CAM Works

Same day crowns CEREC — the short answer is that the system lets a dentist scan a prepared tooth, design a restoration on-screen, mill it chairside, and cement it, all within a single appointment. No lab slip, no temporary, no second visit.

That’s been technically possible since 1985, when Dentsply Sirona’s CEREC (CEramic REConstruction) became the first commercially available chairside CAD/CAM system on the market. The platform celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025, and the underlying workflow has been refined considerably since its debut. Understanding what it actually involves — hardware, software, materials, and realistic chair time — matters before you decide whether it fits your practice.

The Chairside Workflow, Step by Step

The process has four stages, and the whole thing typically runs 60 to 90 minutes, according to Dentsply Sirona.

1. Digital impression. After preparation, the clinician captures a 3D scan of the prepared tooth, opposing arch, and bite using an intraoral scanner. No impression material, no trays. If you’re already using an intraoral scanner for other workflows — orthodontic records, for example — you’ll recognise this step immediately. For a look at current scanner options, see our guide to the best intraoral scanner on the market.

2. CAD design. CEREC Software generates an initial restoration proposal by analysing the full scan, factoring in occlusion and adjacent tooth morphology. Per Dentsply Sirona, this biogeneric analysis produces individualized proposals that the clinician can refine. With CEREC Software version 5.3, designs can also be uploaded to DS Core — Dentsply Sirona’s cloud platform — and accessed via any modern browser, which is useful if you want a second set of eyes from a remote technician or plan to batch restorations.

3. Milling. The design is sent wirelessly to a chairside mill. The current lineup includes the Primemill (high-performance), Primemill Lite (mid-tier), and the entry-level CEREC Go — though Dentsply Sirona notes the Go will not be available in the US or Canada at launch. The Primemill’s 4-motor system runs a Super-Fast Milling mode that, per the manufacturer’s own data, produces a zirconia crown in roughly 5 minutes. Composite inlays can be done in under 2 minutes.

4. Finishing and seating. Glass ceramics and zirconia require post-milling heat treatment in a chairside furnace like the CEREC SpeedFire, which handles sintering with guided workflows. Composites skip that step. Once finished, the restoration is cemented and the appointment is done.

Materials and Indications

CEREC supports zirconia, high-strength glass ceramics (including lithium disilicate), hybrid ceramics, composites, and feldspar. Supported restorations span crowns, veneers, inlays, onlays, bridges, abutment crowns, and surgical guides. That last one is worth noting — the same scan and design infrastructure that produces a crown can feed into guided implant surgery planning, making the investment work across more of your clinical workflow.

Not every mill in the range supports every material. The Primemill and Primemill Lite handle the full material list; the entry-level Go is more limited. Check the manufacturer’s current specs before purchasing blocks, as material compatibility can shift with software updates.

The Clinical Evidence

Forty years of clinical deployment is one thing. Controlled data is another. Several multicenter studies support the approach:

• A 5-year multicenter RCT published in June 2025 evaluated CEREC chairside-fabricated ceramic crowns (lithium disilicate and PICN/Enamic) for screw-retained hybrid abutment posterior crowns across six private practices and one university clinic in Switzerland.
• A separate multicenter prospective study of CEREC chairside partial crowns followed 73 restorations in 59 patients over a mean observation period of approximately 58 months.
• A randomised clinical study tracked 5-year performance of zirconia-reinforced lithium silicate partial crowns chairside-fabricated with CEREC in 45 patients.

None of these are independent of the system’s developer, and the research brief for this article doesn’t include survival rates, so it would be wrong to quote specific percentages here. But the volume and duration of the evidence base is more substantial than most chairside systems can claim. Clinicians evaluating the category should seek out the full publications rather than relying on marketing summaries.

Practice Economics

The business case is reasonably clear. Glass-ceramic and zirconia crowns — the materials CEREC is built around — command two to three times the fee of composite resin crowns, according to the research underpinning this article. Eliminating temporisation, lab fees, and the second appointment also concentrates revenue into a single visit and reduces no-show risk.

A cross-sectional survey published in 2026 via ScienceDirect found that roughly 56.5% of non-adopter clinicians expressed a favorable disposition toward future CAD/CAM adoption, suggesting the market is still in a growth phase. That’s relevant context for practices considering whether early investment creates a competitive differentiator or whether they can wait.

The upfront cost is real — a full Primemill setup is a significant capital commitment. The honest trade-off is that volume matters. A practice placing two or three single-unit restorations a week will see a different payback curve than one placing ten.

For practices exploring the broader digital ecosystem this technology sits within, our overview of digital dentistry covers where chairside CAD/CAM fits among other technologies, from intraoral scanning to digital dentures.

Where CEREC Sits in the Broader Market

CEREC is the dominant system in chairside CAD/CAM by tenure and installed base, but it’s not the only option. Planmeca, Medit, and others offer chairside or semi-chairside workflows. CEREC’s advantage is the depth of its integrated ecosystem — scanner, mill, furnace, cloud software — and its clinical track record. Its constraint is that you’re buying into one vendor’s stack. That’s a real consideration if your practice already has scanning hardware from another manufacturer.

The AI-expanded workflow announced alongside the Primemill Lite and CEREC Go is still early, and vendor-reported claims about AI-powered proposal accuracy should be evaluated once independent data exists.

For most practices considering their first chairside mill, CEREC is the lowest-risk starting point, purely because of the evidence base and the installed support network. Practices with heavy implant workflows or existing scan infrastructure from another vendor should map compatibility before committing.