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Puck Height and Nesting: How Labs Waste a Third of Every Disc

By Dr. Marcos B. Pesci · July 25, 2026 · 26 views

Labs compare zirconia on price per disc. The number that matters is price per finished unit, and that is decided at nesting, not at purchase.

The arithmetic nobody runs

Take a 98 mm disc. Count how many units you genuinely get out of it in normal production, not in a best case nesting demonstration. Divide the disc price by that number.

Now do it again for a disc that costs more but is taller. If a 16 mm puck yields a certain number of single crowns and a 20 mm puck lets you nest taller restorations or stack more efficiently, the more expensive disc can produce a lower cost per unit. The reverse is also true — buying height you never use is paying for material that gets thrown away as offcut.

MIIYEN - 3D PRO ML 98.5x16mm A2 - Dental Zirconia Discs Multilayer — Cost per finished unit is decided at nesting, not at purchase.

Where the waste actually happens

Three places. Mixed case heights on one disc, where a single tall unit forces you to use a thick puck for a job mostly made of short ones. Partial discs left over when a job finishes, which sit on the shelf until the material ages out. And conservative nesting margins set once and never tightened.

The third is the biggest and the cheapest to fix. Most CAM software defaults to generous spacing. Tightening it within the manufacturer's stated minimum is free yield.

Matching height to your actual case mix

Pull a month of production and sort by restoration height. Most labs find that a large majority of cases fit comfortably in a shorter puck, and a small minority need the tall one.

Stocking two heights and routing cases to the right one usually beats standardising on a single tall disc, because you stop milling short crowns out of expensive material.

The full arch exception

Full arch changes the calculation entirely. Bulk reduction across 14 units puts far more stress into a puck than any single crown, and disc failure during milling wastes the whole blank plus the machine time. For that work, crack resistance during high volume milling matters more than yield.

The GUSROM 3D PRO ML PREMIUM is a 98 mm x 16 mm multilayer running 800 to 1,200 MPa with a crack control structure aimed specifically at breakage during high volume milling, which is the failure this section is about.

A worked comparison

Take two discs of the same diameter, one 16 mm and one 20 mm, with the taller one priced higher. Nest a typical week of work into each in your CAM software and count real yield, including the offcut you cannot use.

If the taller disc lets you stack two layers of short copings where the shorter one gave you one, the cost per unit falls even though the disc price rose. If your case mix is all single crowns under 12 mm, the extra height is material you are buying and discarding.

Do this once, with your own case mix, and the answer holds for a year.

Partial discs are the invisible loss

A job finishes and leaves a disc with material still in it. That partial goes back on the shelf and, in most labs, is never used again — because reloading a partial requires knowing exactly what has already been removed, and few workflows track that.

Two habits fix most of it. Keep a small number of active shades rather than a wide range, so partials get consumed by the next job. And batch cases by shade rather than milling as they arrive, which is a scheduling change rather than a purchasing one.

Nesting margins

CAM software ships with conservative spacing between restorations because conservative is safe. Manufacturers publish a minimum, and most labs never move from the default toward it.

Tightening spacing within the stated minimum is free yield with no equipment change. Test it on one disc, inspect the units for any sign of interference, and adopt it if clean.

Where the full-arch calculation changes

Full arch inverts the priority. A disc that fails during a 14-unit mill wastes the blank, the machine hours and the schedule slot. At that point yield per disc is irrelevant next to the probability of completing the job.

For that work, buy on crack resistance and accept a higher cost per unit. It is cheaper than one failed arch.