Machined (turned) surface
Also known as: Turned surface, Machined titanium surface, As-machined surface, Minimally rough surface
The as-manufactured implant surface left by machining the titanium fixture, with no additional blasting, etching, anodising or coating step applied afterwards.
Research in progress. Some fields on this entry are not yet verified against a primary source, so we have left them blank rather than filling them in — and this page is not published to search engines until they are.
Key facts
| Production process | The fixture is cut on a lathe and cleaned, and nothing further is done to its texture. Every roughened surface described elsewhere on this site is a modification applied on top of this baseline. |
|---|---|
| Surface category | Roughness classification (Wennerberg & Albrektsson 2009): smooth Sa below 0.5 micrometres; minimally rough Sa 0.5-1 micrometres; moderately rough Sa above 1 up to 2 micrometres; rough Sa above 2 micrometres.Verified spec[1]These thresholds are the general classification. We have not attached a source giving a measured Sa value for a named machined implant, so this record does not state where any specific product falls. |
| Surface roughness | Requires manual verification(Turned surfaces vary with the machining protocol and no single figure applies across manufacturers.) |
| Clinical evidence | A 2009 systematic review of 100 in vivo papers reported that smooth and minimally rough surfaces showed less strong bone responses than rougher surfaces, and that in some investigations moderately rough surfaces showed stronger bone responses than rough surfaces.Verified spec[1] |
| Geographic availability | Requires manual verification(Machined fixtures are largely historical in mainstream ranges, but machined collars and machined abutment surfaces remain common. We have not verified a current product list.) |
Overview
The machined surface is the original one: an implant straight off the lathe, with no roughening step. It matters here mainly as the reference point against which every later surface is measured, because the research question that produced modern surfaces was whether adding texture improves the bone response. The evidence collected in the 2009 Wennerberg and Albrektsson review points one way on that narrow question, and manufacturers have moved accordingly. Two things are worth separating, though. First, "machined" has not disappeared: many current implants deliberately keep a machined collar or a machined abutment surface where soft tissue rather than bone is the neighbour. Second, a rougher surface is not automatically a better one - the same review noted that surfaces rougher than about 2 micrometres did not consistently outperform moderately rough ones, which is why the industry converged on a middle band rather than chasing maximum texture.
Sources
Numbers match the citations beside each claim above.
Clinical evidence
- [1]Effects of titanium surface topography on bone integration: a systematic review — Clinical Oral Implants Research (PubMed record), 2009. Accessed 2026-07-21.