Conically tapered interface fits (TIF) provide a reliable and strong self-locking mechanism between a dental implant and its matching abutment. On occasion, it may be necessary to remove the abutment for maintenance purposes. The removal of an indexed implant with a TIF-type connection requires the application of a (removal) force to overcome the friction force due to preload.The purpose of this study was to measure the removal force needed to extract the abutment from the implant in TIF-type connections.A workbench was designed and built to measure the forces involved in the abutment removal process. Experiments were conducted to test the removal force (F R ) for 20 conical interfaces specifically built for the study. The effects of the preload magnitude (F P ) and the difference between the taper angles of the implant and the abutment (taper mismatch) were investigated experimentally and theoretically. A 2-way factorial ANOVA and regression analysis was used to evaluate the variability in the process and the influence of the 2 variables considered in the experiments (α=.05).Experiments revealed that the (F R -F P ) ratio decreases with the preload F P , whereas the influence of the taper mismatch cannot be clearly stated.The removal force increases with increasing preload and the F R -F P ratio varies widely. This variability is attributed to the variability of the friction coefficient, and it can influence implant-removal applications because the removal force can be, in some restorations, as large as 40% of the preload.