If you are going to ask what karat is dental gold, you may be surprised that they come in different ones. There is no fixed or set karat of gold which can be said to be the standard of measure when it comes to the use of gold for dental purposes. But one thing is certain though, pure gold is never used in it. As luxurious as you may want to go in your dental treatment, 24 karat gold cannot be used in dental gold. It will be too soft to use which is not a good thing if you are thinking about chewing food with it.
Dental gold can come in various forms and sizes. They can be used for dental crowns, bridges, and gold tooth or teeth. Gold is sometimes used in these dental fixtures due to the characteristics of this metal that is very desirable if you want something that will be able to stand wear and tear for a long period of time. Gold has a natural ability to resist any pressure which is most like to damage it if you combine it with the proper types of other hard metals. If you have had dental restorations in the past, then you may want to check if you have any that contains gold.
Dental gold does not come in pure gold form. It will be mixed together with other base and noble metals in order to give you the strength and durability that you need. Some of these metals are silver, tin, copper, or titanium. They are needed for their own metallic characteristics that provide the necessary toughness that will be very important when making dental fixtures. Without them, you will definitely chew your dental gold and deform it in the process making it utterly useless.
So with that said, most dentists go for the lower karats of gold, which means that they have more additional metals blended into the gold to make it stronger. A lot of dental gold nowadays are composed of 10 to 16 karat gold. The highest that can be used though is up to 20 karats although this would need much more harder metals to create. This way, they will have the best characteristics, which will make it able to withstand all the pressure that will be needed during mastication.
The karat of your dental gold will be solved easily if your dentist lets you know beforehand what type of gold he or she would be using in order to create it. As had been said earlier, most of them would prefer to use the lower karats as they tend to be more durable to constant wear and tear. You can also try sending dental gold to a refiner in order to determine what type of gold was used. The assaying process will show you the actual contents of your dental gold, aside from your tooth. It will present all the added metals which were used as well as the karat of the gold used. photo attribution: kencf0618