Short answer
A milled occlusal splint is a hard night guard designed in CAD from a scan of both arches and milled from a pre-polymerized PMMA disc. In lab testing, milled PMMA showed higher flexural and fracture strength and less wear than conventional heat-cured acrylic and 3D-printed splint resins.
What it is
A hard occlusal splint, the everyday night guard, designed in CAD on a scan of both arches and milled from a PMMA disc. The disc is polymerized at the factory, so the splint never goes through processing in the lab.
The indication, the occlusal scheme and the wear schedule are your decisions. What we control is the appliance: thickness, contacts and fit to your prescription.
When to prescribe it
A milled splint makes sense when material strength matters, as with a patient who has already broken or worn through earlier guards. A 2026 study from the UCL Eastman Dental Institute compared heat-cured PMMA, milled PMMA and two printed resins. Milled PMMA had the highest flexural strength (115.5 MPa vs 86.6 MPa for heat-cured), the lowest wear in a chewing simulator and the lowest monomer release.
In another test, published in Materials in 2023, milled splints withstood an average of 3,051 N before fracturing, against 1,304 N for conventional heat-cured ones. These are bench results: they describe the material, not the clinical outcome.
How we make it
The splint is designed and milled in PMMA in our lab in São Paulo, Brazil, with the thickness, contacts and guidance you prescribed. A mandibular splint, a specific thickness or a less common guidance scheme is confirmed when the case is opened. Every stage is validated and logged, and you follow its phase in the portal.
What to send
The basics are in our case submission guide. For a splint, the one thing that can’t be missing is the bite registration: without it at the opening you want, there is no way to set the thickness. Our intraoral scanning guide shows how to scan the bite.
Frequently asked questions
Milled, heat-cured or 3D-printed?
In a 2026 study in Clinical and Experimental Dental Research, milled PMMA had the highest flexural strength (115.5 MPa vs 86.6 MPa for heat-cured), the least wear and the lowest monomer release. The printed resins trailed on all three tests.
Do milled splints fracture less?
In the lab, yes. In a 2023 study in Materials, after thermomechanical aging, milled splints withstood an average of 3,051 N before fracturing, against 1,304 N for heat-cured acrylic, with the printed splints in between. These are in vitro data; how a splint holds up in the mouth also depends on the patient.
Do I need to send stone models?
Not if you scanned both arches and the bite. For analog impressions, send the models and the bite registration; we scan the models here before design.
Sources
- Flexural strength, monomer release, and wear of occlusal splint materials fabricated through conventional, milled, or 3D-printed methods · Clinical and Experimental Dental Research (2026)
- Comparative analysis between conventional acrylic, CAD/CAM milled, and 3D CAD/CAM printed occlusal splints · Materials (2023)