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how about that, new to fix broken teeth...
didi got one last week, worked perfectly. mine fell out in 3 hours, so i'll go get her to reglue it. it way less hassle than the old method of building one up.

or excavating the rest of it

Had something similar done a couple years ago. A molar died and had to have a root canal excavated. That was by a specialist. My regular dentist only put a cap on it. Normally it's a lengthy process involving impressions done with toxic tasting goo and a couple weeks waiting for some lab to make a tooth from the mold. Not so this time.

My dentist had recently acquired some new hardware and I would be among the first to have it used on me. A 3D x-ray was taken of the tooth needing a cap. That information was put into a computer that made a digital model of the cap. It was a close approximation and my dentist did some fine tuning to the graphic model before he was happy. Then he showed me a small pedestal with a white ceramic-looking cylinder on it. He said he was going to put that into a machine that would take everything off except the cap modeled by the computer. He placed this into a glass enclosed chamber and a high pressure nozzle squirted some liquid onto the cylinder. The liquid eventually did what it was intended to do and in about an hour the cap for my root canal was finished. We went back to the dental chair and he glued the cap in place. It's still there nearly three years later. The whole process took less than two hours, as opposed to two weeks the old way. Plus, only one person, my dentist, did the entire job. Needless to say I was very impressed.

The process for making a cap seems to be the reverse of printing a tooth. Printing is an additive process, but what my dentist did was subtract material from a pre-made form. I'm guessing a tooth with a piece of it broken off would get the same treatment.

well, it only took ten minutes, but she said it was temporary, rather than the finished product. she explained why, but i did not really get the gist of it... pretty though.