Metal Mouth Message Board

I wear elastics and so have metal buttons, one installed on each side. It seems that the buttons are no longer fitting well into the cuts made into the tray. When my last tray did not clear the button on one side, my orthodontist's office cut more material out of the tray, a lot more - now the outside of that tooth is barely covered by plastic (see picture). The ortho wanted to send my future trays back to Align for a fix, but I am now being told that Align told my ortho "no" and to manually cut down each tray for the rest of my treatment

Well with the next tray I put on today, I discovered that a similar misalignment is starting to happen on the other side. Probably in the next tray or two, the metal button will conflict with the plastic.

I'm concerned these significant manual cuts out of the trays are going to compromise my tooth movement and/or weaken the integrity of the trays. Perhaps this is a commonplace problem, but my orthodontist didn't seem to think so when the problem was discovered.

Has anyone encountered this issue before and if so, what happened?

YOURE paying good money for this treaatment so no is not an option..tell your dentist your not happy with it. if needs be you should contact invisalign maybe email them and tell them the problem. invisalign only works on the teeth which are covered properly right? so call up the dentist explain again and voice your concerns. you may end up adding a few months onto your treatment or may even be ruining all the lovely work the invisalign has done so far..by the way your teeth look lovely!

I'm afraid I don't know how to help you but just as a thought... Is it possible that the ortho hasn't got any movement planned for that tooth? If the tooth doesn't need to move then maybe it doesn't matter if it is only half covered? Then again, the tooth must be moving a little or else the attachment would still fit in the space provided. I think your ortho should be able to explain Align's reasoning to you. Surely Align told them why they were saying "No", if they denied the request. Did you speak to him/her directly about it?
Good luck...I hope you find your answer!

Thank you both....

Since the problem is happening on both sides - the decision changed and the trays are being re-made. I wonder what the cause of the misalignment is and I really do hope there is no repeat of this - really a pain considering the trays were fitting so well up to that point. Don't know yet what the underlying issue is....

Still, I was searching for other examples of trays with these cuts in them to accomodate metal buttons and I haven't found any. Surely some of you in elastics have these as well I hope?

I wore elastics and had a similar cut in my trays. It was a bit wider at the edge, more like the one in your first pic after the cut by your office. The cut doesn’t compromise tooth movement or weaken the integrity of the trays. My ortho planned the cut in early 2010 before elastics became a standard Invisalign feature in Oct 2010.

I wore the elastics for over a year and never had any alignment issues. I’d think misalignment could repeat if the cut is the exact same size as the button and your tooth move out of alignment with it again. If it does, ask your ortho to cut the tray a bit and/or move the metal button a little instead of ordering new trays… it’d take less than 10 minutes.