When placing open coil spring, the purpose is to make space!! Typically, there is severe crowding or blocked out adult teeth (PH I). When measuring the open coil spring, you place one end of the spring up against the distal bracket you will be placing it between and measure across until you have reached the mesial bracket of the blocked out tooth and measure an extra 1/2 bracket of spring. You measure 1/2 bracket larger than the space because if not the spring would not be active. You want to make sure that you measure accurately because over powering the spring can be too much force, causing the teeth being pushed against to flare. REMEMBER.. LIGHT FORCES!! If open coil spring is too active, the adjacent teeth can rotate and flare, and flaring is very difficult to overcome. In some cases we measure 3/4 bracket or a whole bracket but the doctor will instruct you to do so.

You want to make sure the tooth that is not engaged in the wire is not left to free float because the tooth can move in a direction we do not want it to while space is being made. To actively engage the tooth without the wire, you will use a piece of wire tie that is tied to the wire.

First, you will have the wire ready to go, cut, measure, and OCS already measured and on the wire.

Before placing the wire, you will place a piece of wire tie through the slot of each bracket door that is blocked out. It is hard to close the door and get wire tie through the slot if you place the wire with open coil spring first, so it is more efficient to place the wire ties first.

Once the wire ties are in place, you can then place the wire and compress the open coil spring. After all of the doors are closed, you will compress the OCS in the direction that the tooth needs to rotate and tightly tie the wire tie, compressing the wire towards the blocked out tooth.

Use the mathieu to tighten the wire tie and then leave about 1.5mm after trimming it with the ligature cutter. Tuck the remaining 1.5mm of wire tie underneath the wire and bracket so that it does not unravel and it does not cause the patient discomfort. If you feel like the wire tie is going to come untucked and poke the patient, you can always add a small glue dot on the end of the wire tie.

The goal of this is to help the tooth rotate and pull it forward in the right direction while the space is being made and prepare the tooth to eventually be engaged with a wire. When this process is done correctly, it is a lot easier to engage the tooth and bring into proper position.