3. Material and methods
During the bio-mechanical testing two questions were
answered:
1. Is the resilience of the Mobile-Implant similar to those
of natural teeth? and. 2. Is the welding and titanium ring in the implant
neck region stable enough to resist normal chewing
forces?
In the "rst part of the test the implant was "xed in
a testing unit (Fig. 5) and movements of the implant head
in axial direction were observed. Therefore the implant
was loaded by a straight abutment and de"ned loading
forces (1}2000 N) were applied. The movements of the
abutment were registered by a mechanical measuring
unit (Inerrapid, MKE, Heidenreichstein, Austria), that
registered movements with a resolution of 0.001 mm. For
this test 10 implants of 11mm length were used. The
measurements were performed 3 times on each implant
and for each loading force and the mean was registered.
In the next part of the test horizontal forces between
1 and 400N were used to verify horizontal movements of
the implant abutment. Measurements were made as for
the axial loads.
Following this the long-term stability of the titanium
ring and the bordering welding lines were examined. The
same testing unit*as described above*was used.
First 10 implants were loaded by 300N for 12 million
movements in the axial direction. Another 10 implants
were loaded by horizontal forces of 200N for 12 million
times. After this long-term loading the titanium ring and
welding region was observed by an scanning electron
microscope examination (Leica Inc., Frankfurt a. M.,Germany) to observe material destruction of the implants,
if any.