Get ready, dental techs. Ivoclar flash sale is here. From November the 3rd to the 14th, you can score unbeatable deals on the equipment that will set you up for success in 2026. Whether you're upgrading your mill, your furnace, or expanding your workflow, now's the time to save big. And here's the best part. When you purchase a milling machine, delivery, installation, and training are all included, so you'll be production ready from day one. But hurry, these offers won't last long. Reach out to your either class sales rep today and don't miss your chance to power up your lab for the year ahead.
Welcome to Voices from the Bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an e-mail at info at voicesfromthebench.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Greetings and welcome to episode 398 of Voices from the Bench. My name is Elvis.
My name is Vacation Barbara. I know, oh, this is after, right?
Yeah. At the time of this episode releasing, I'm coming back from the amazing Noak Dental Lab Fest. And you'll be, I think, somewhere still out on the high seas.
So I am Vacation Barbara. Good.
You are Vacation Barbara.
My name is Vacation Barbara. I haven't been on a vacation all year, so it's time.
Have you really not all year?
Who goes to Germany and then vacation or vacation and then Germany. I went on the trip from hell and came back to work, but I enjoyed it. I loved it.
But it wasn't a vacation to you because we recorded a bajillion people.
Bingo.
Like 11 hours worth of content. That's not easy.
Phew.
So because of that, we're recording this super early. Please stay tuned. I'm sure next week we're going to have updates on both the Lab Fest and your vacation, your big cruise. I can't wait to hear about it.
From what I can recall.
Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping I make it back and I don't get arrested for offending someone during Family Feud. You know, you're going to have me as a host and they release the name of the players today and it's going to be a group in its own. Let's just say Joe.
Oh, I think it's going to be fantastic. I've already seen it on. on social media. There's two groups and it's going to be just super fun and you're going to be amazing. And I know you've done your homework, so you're ready to roll.
Yeah, if you mean watching Family Feud clips online, then yeah, that's about as far as I've got.
Yeah, that's about all you need.
But sadly, this actually wraps up our 2025 dental conference schedule for us. I don't think there's any more shows, at least that we're going to. I know. I mean, it's early November and we're done. But 2026 is already looking absolutely fantastically amazing.
And very busy.
Very busy. So right off the bat, January 15th to the 17th, we're out in Las Vegas at Vision 21. Barb and I love that meeting. We go every year. We don't do the podcast there. It's not really set up for it, but we go just to be attendees and see everybody and enjoy the content and just have a great time. So if you want to have a great time, Vision 21. Of course, in February, from the 19th to the 20th, we have the amazing Cal Lab meeting in Chicago, celebrating their 100th year. And for the first year, Our very own Barb is chair of Cal Lab. Barb, that's so amazing.
I'm so excited. Hundred years. Like, I don't even know. I just need to learn to do backflips so I can do them across the stage before my intro. So we'll see how I go.
You do that, jaws hitting the ground. If you just walk up there and you just start backflipping.
I don't know. I'm going to do something.
Well, maybe the cocktail hour. Maybe. I don't know.
And that's the same weekend as Lab Day Chicago, where you and I will once again be partnering up with the wonderful company Ivoclar for the 4th year in a row to record. I'm so excited.
Yes, ma'am.
Then in April, from the 9th to the 11th, the podcast is making its much needed return to the DLAT meeting in Texas, which I've already seen all over social media.
Yeah, the DLAT. It's been a few years since we've been. I don't know why we haven't gone in a while, so it's time to go back.
Probably because of the three meetings before it and the two after it that we might be like, yeah, we might be a little busy.
Yeah. And then announcing for the first time, we are back to the island of Mallorca for the Exocad Insights meeting that's actually happening April 30th to May 1st.
Oh my goodness.
For those that don't know, this is an awesome location for an awesome meeting. So if you are planning any meetings in 2026. Look at this one, because you'll get to go onto a fantastic island, and it's just such a great show. Thank you, Exocad, for inviting us back, and we are so looking forward to it.
That's 4 meetings in 4 minutes. That's pretty awesome.
Pretty much.
See you guys there.
Let's go. I'm just saying, for anybody out there, March is clear right now.
True.
So this week we got to talk to a sort of in-office technician who I met at an Ivoclar party during Lab Day Chicago in February. This is why you should always go to events during Lab Day because you meet cool people. Jonathan Burke definitely didn't set out on a life to make teeth. He got a degree in jazz guitar, and in a band, a friend introduced him to a denturist that actually just needed a driver. You know how that is, Barbara.
That's what she said.
Delivering.
You're going to miss me. I know.
Yeah, I know.
I'm going to get it all in now.
Jonathan started pouring models, moved to a bigger lab, poured more models, moved to a smaller lab that allowed him to learn more, and then he went back to that original denturist to actually help him with digital dentures. In a nutshell. Eventually, he ended up in his current home of a lab and a practice doing full arches. Jonathan talks about learning alongside the dentist on doing those full arches. getting into photogrammetry, treatment planning directly with the patients, and now he's recently become the owner of the lab. It's a really great story. So join us as we chat with Jonathan Burke.
So we're still a couple weeks away from our episode with Jordan Greenberg, the HyperDent dude from Follow Me Technology.
Yeah, we are. I actually ran into him in New Orleans at LabFest. My God, tons of attendees were really picking his brain. It was refreshing to see that both lab owners and technicians have identified CAM as a potential area for improvement for their labs and milling centers.
Well, you know, Elvis, us lab techs were tankerers. And it seems like CAM is the tool that allows for us to tinker with our milling results, right?
You know what? I think you're right. So I overheard a few conversations at Labfest about that. And I learned that there's a feature included in every Hyperdent license called Template Editor Lite. Now, it's not their full-blown template generating tool. That would be a little too much. But it gives their users the ability to make small, yet safe, changes to their milling results.
Oh, cool. And do tell, how does that work?
I don't know. better than to quote me on this, but some of these conversations went into a ton of technical depth. But from what I understood, there's a predefined range of milling strategy adjustments available to the user.
But I thought Jordan said they did all the template validation themselves in their New Hampshire tech center.
They sure do, right there in New Hampshire. Who would have thunk? That's exactly right. But this is all part of their development efforts. So basically, as an example, the user can make adjustments to prioritize surface quality over speed or vice versa. Or they can make small adjustments to satisfy their fit preferences for every restoration type.
Oh, wow. It's like choose your own cam venture.
Good one, Barb. That's hilarious. That's the funniest thing you've ever said?
I try, I try.
Voices from the bench. The interview. Well, when you tell people to leave you alone, you know what that means, right?
It'll probably happen.
They're gonna come find you to bug you just for that reason. So I'm super excited today because, let's see, we met back in February.
Yeah.
We tried to record. three, four times? Somewhere around there. Finally, Jonathan Burke. Am I saying that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, cool. Jonathan Burke is on the podcast. How are you, sir?
I'm doing great. It's Friday. I'm working on some full arches and I'm ready for the weekend.
Yeah, well, I appreciate you taking time out of the Taylor Swift launch day. I know you're listening nonstop to come on the podcast.
Yeah, I know. It was a, my daughter's not happy about it, but really? things have to be done.
So Jonathan, how'd you get into this crazy business?
Well, it's kind of a long story. I originally went to music school at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and got a degree in jazz guitar. This was in.
Wow.
Yeah, I got, I graduated in 2010, decided to move back home to Bend, Oregon, as one does. And the student loans started hitting, but this was right at the height of the recession. And I couldn't get a job anywhere. I tried Starbucks, Best Buy, all the normal things and just couldn't get a job and couldn't start making money. I was playing in some bands and bars and stuff like that. And one of the bands I played in, a band called the Michelle Van Handel Group. It was like a jazz group. And the trombone player in the band is Dave Van Handel, her husband, and he happens to be a denturist.
Nice.
And he knew I was looking for a job, so he said, you know, why don't you come work as a delivery driver for my dental lab? And I said, that sounds great. It was kind of funny because I had just gotten another offer to work at a guitar factory with a guitar luthier.
A person that makes guitars.
I don't know if it was.
Luthier.
Yeah, So they make a high-end, yeah, so they make high-end acoustic guitars here in Bend, or at least they did. And so I was kind of at a crossroads and maybe it was deciding to make a good decision, not music related, like get myself into a ton of student debt, but I decided to go with a dental lab job. So I started working for Darius.
This was a denturist that also like had a lab that delivered to other, what, denturists or other dentists or.
Other dentists, yeah. So he had a ton of accounts. So he saw his own patients and he also would do commercial removable work for most of the dentists around town.
That's pretty impressive. It says a lot between the relationship between the denturist and the dentist.
Yeah, for sure. And I think they appreciated it because if they had a specially tough case, they'd call Dave and be like, hey, can you help me out with this one? And he was always happy to do that. But that's where I started learning everything.
I wonder how many phone calls happened where like, just send the patient over to me. Let me do this. Yeah.
Or often, you know, if we got bad impressions, he would go over there and teach the staff how to take good impressions. That wasn't uncommon. Yeah. Or, you know, if they just couldn't get a patient happy with adjustments or reliance and stuff like that, he'd be happy to take that on. And I think the dentist did appreciate it from him. So they had a good relationship.
I would imagine, yeah. Did he do any fixed or was it all removable?
All removable. Yeah. So dentures, night guards, partials, all that stuff. But yeah, no fixed.
And you started as a delivery driver?
Yeah. So when I wasn't on the road, I was in the lab just learning how to do all the grunt work, like pouring models and articulating. And, you know, I started learning more of the tricks of the trade as one dies when I wasn't on the road. So I eventually learned how to start setting teeth and processing dentures, and the old, the flasks and everything like that. And I worked for Dave for about two years and I loved it. And I eventually decided to move to Portland because my wife was going to nursing school. She lived in Portland and I moved there to be with her. And I got a job at a really big lab just in the model room, pouring like 100 models A day. with the hydrocolloid machine and everything like that. And so I worked there for a couple of years, and it was kind of hard to get cross-trained and kind of hard to move around and learn new things. And so there was another dental lab up the street called Davis Dental Lab, and it was a much smaller Fix lab. I didn't have any experience with Fix. So I just decided to walk in the door one day and I met with Brian Krusi, who's the owner of that lab. And I said, hey, are you looking for somebody? And they said, not really, but you know, you might as well apply. So I applied and ended up back in the model room there again. But it was cool because it was different. It was fixed.
And it was smaller.
It was smaller, which was nice. And so I was learning how to trim dyes and do all that stuff. And I really liked it. And eventually, they knew that I was decent with computers. So they asked if I wanted to learn how to design. I said, yeah. So they had the old, like the whole Jensen system with the tabletop mills and their version of Exocad and their scanner and everything like that.
Jensen.
I do them all.
Oh, from Jensen Dental back in when they were into all of that. Yeah.
I actually just learned about this system. I was just with Kevin Mahan in AdWest Rona World. He's awesome. He's the best. Yeah. And he told me, yeah, that was our whole system. And so I had no idea. So hexocad.
Totally forgot they were into all of that. And then they got out of it, which was, you know, probably a smart thing once it got flooded. But they were early.
Yeah. And well, he was telling me that they were the first kind of system that was affordable for dental labs.
Or one of the first systems. Yeah.
That got you a scanner and mills and a design software all in-house.
But it was basically Exocad, right?
Yeah, it was. Back in the day, that was probably 2012, 2013, or something like that. But I loved designing. It was my favorite thing to do. So I would do the model work in the morning and then design in the afternoon.
Well, who taught you how to design and what a tooth should look like? I mean, where did you get all that knowledge? I mean, I know you look at a lot when you're pouring models, but...
I learned a lot of that from Jared and from Jared Davis, who was the owner who bought the lab from his dad, and Ryan, they worked with me for a long time on it. And they had really good ceramists there too, where if they would get a really badly designed crown from me, they'd pull me over and be like, hey, these are all the things you could have done better. That was always really, really good advice for me.
Sure, did you like it? I mean, you liked it. I loved it. Did you take to it easily?
I think so, yeah. I got into a flow where I was scanning and designing and milling all at the same time. And I kind of liked that efficiency. And I really did like designing because I do like computer stuff. And to this day, I still really, really love designing.
Sure.
Yeah. So I worked there for a little while and then decided to move back home to Bend and worked for Dave again for probably another six years. You went back to the denturist. processing dentures. I did, yeah. Because he's a good friend. He's still a good friend.
Yeah.
I owe a lot to him because I learned a lot about dentures from him. And I use a lot of the knowledge that he taught me to this day.
And what do you do? Just analog dentures.
Not anymore, no. But back then, yeah. Where I'm working. Back then, yeah, just analog dentures. Yeah. You know, IP and teeth and. and all that stuff and flasking and everything. Our most high-tech piece of equipment was the flexible partial injection. Oh, the big wheel spin.
Thing you'd spin around and yeah.
This was like a pod. You put a pod in there and injected the, it's called Duraflex, injected it in. You can make partials, like flexible partials. Dave hated them because he couldn't repair them that easy.
Well, yeah, that's the flexible life.
Yeah. So.
How long were you with them the second time?
About 6 years.
Wow.
Yeah. I was with him for a long time. We even had some discussions about me buying the lab from him. He's the kind of guy that would probably never retire. So super fun guy to work with, but he's going to work till he drops.
A lot of people will, but did he ever take you chair side and show you how that was?
Yeah, he actually made my dad's dentures. So I got to take part in that.
Yeah.
So we brought him in. He had his extractions from a dentist and then my dad needed the dentures. So Dave went in and took the records and everything like that. So he made him a set of immediates and did his reliance and stuff like that. So I got to be chairside there and for several other patients as well.
Yeah.
When they would come into his clinic.
Sure, And then where'd you go after that?
After that, I saw an ad for a dental lab technician in a clinic. I thought that sounded kind of cool and the pay was a lot better. So I interviewed, this was at the time it was called Denture Artistry. implants, crowns, and veneers. And the two doctors that own it are a doctor. Yeah, I know. It's a mouthful. The doctors that own it now are Dr. Alec Smith and Dr. Tom Spoonster. They bought it from a couple that opened it up with the intention of it being kind of an affordable dentures model. So they just kind of had a closet with a makeshift dental lab with a wax pot and a Benson burner and a big pot to process our cases. So I interviewed with Alec Smith. He and I got along really, really because he's about the same age as me, maybe a year or two older. He actually just turned 40, so he's two years older. And we both grew up in Bend. And we both play music. He plays drums. I play guitar. And we both kind of went to the same high schools and stuff like that. And we just like to nerd out about dental lab stuff. So it was immediately I could tell it was a good fit. So I started with him and it was kind of the same. It was all removables, all analog. I got to see my work in the mouth quite a bit, which I still do, which is a huge, huge opportunity. And then eventually, they decided they wanted to go digital and start doing all-in-X. They were taking a lot of CE to learn how to do all-in-X surgeries. And so we started doing that slowly but surely with doing the old school denture conversions and everything like that. He wanted to learn it that way, so we knew how to do it before we started learning the digital way in case we ever needed a bailout, which I think was smart.
Yeah, no, absolutely. So Were they placing implants before, just single units type situation?
Yeah. and single units for things like overdentures and stuff like that. So they took a lot of courses at implant pathways.
Oh yeah.
They traveled all over doing a ton of all-on-X courses. So it took them a while before they started wanting to bring it in-house. And when we first started doing that, they were bringing in mentors quite a bit, which I think was also smart.
Did they send you to any courses?
The only course that they sent me to was when we decided to convert it to being digital, and we took the full arch master's course with Ryan Dunlop, which is a great course.
Yeah, you guys have hit all the big ones, it seems like.
Yeah, So Alex and I went with One of our assistants, and we learned the whole digital workflow there, which was huge for us, because then we started really delving into it, and we got Exocad, which was nice to have again. and a 3D printer. We got an Asiga, and we just started with that. And then we just kind of went digital overnight, having to learn all that stuff.
But at first you were doing those traditional analog conversions, right? Picking up the temp cylinders, cutting off the flanges, all that.
Yeah, we did that for about a year.
Were you good at it? Did you like it? I mean, it's... Technique sensitive, I mean.
It is very technique sensitive. It was, I remember the first time I had to do it, I was really stressed out the night before.
Oh, we're all stressed out when we do them.
Yeah, because it's intense. It's way more intense than doing it the digital way. So yeah, I was stressed out and I think with reps, as in anything, it got easier and easier and I got more and more confident.
Were you doing any of the smart denture conversion or is this before that time?
I think smart denture conversion was around, but we hadn't really gotten to it by the time we had started doing doing it digitally. So we never really made it to the Smart Denture route, but we thought about it. But once we went to Dr. Dunlop's course, we learned about photogrammetry and OptiSplint. We used a lot of OptiSplint at first before we started using photogrammetry, but we haven't looked back since.
It's hard to look back. I'm in the same boat. I mean, we did OptiSplint for a long time, and once I started doing photogrammetry, I can't go back.
I still love OptiSplint. I do too. You can pour a model, right, which is great.
It's really nice. Yes, yeah. And you have something to verify. It's like a verification jig, I mean, basically.
Exactly. And I still do some cases for outside clinics that don't quite have the volume of arches to justify buying a photogrammetry unit. And so they still use OptiSplint and I'll just take it and throw it in the lab scanner. And that gives me a lot of confidence with the case too.
Full Arch Masters. I mean, we've had Ryan Dunlop on before, but it's very geared towards dentists. From your perspective, what are some pretty cool things you picked up from the course that really helped you as a technician.
So I didn't take the technician specific course. I was there for, I think, what they call their flagship course, which was just kind of their overall, like the umbrella over the whole idea itself and how to just do the digital workflow. But I, you know, I learned how to, over there, they taught us how to do the 3D printed characterization with like your resins and they taught us about printing and it's not so much design, but I was already designing, which kind of gave me a leg up. But it was mostly the finishing aspect and then just kind of the concept of how you leave a trail of breadcrumbs from the All-on-X bridge back to the pre-op and how that can record your bite and how it can keep things accurate.
Fiduciary screws.
Yeah, with the fiducial markers and everything like that. So that was kind of the light, that was the big light bulb for us. I was wondering, how do you do it? And so we just hit the ground running with that and we've been doing it since.
And you literally like left the course and just flipped a switch.
Yeah, It's kind of funny because when we initially got into the digital workflow, we got ThreeShape. And once we went to Dr. Dunlop's course, we realized we needed to go to ExoCAD. So we ditched ThreeShape and we got ExoCAD just because it's more open with that kind of stuff. Or it was at the time.
It's so much easier to layer the scans. That's all it comes down to.
Yeah. And at the time, we knew we wanted to use OptiSplint because we didn't have the volume to buy a photogrammetry unit. And at the time, ExoCAD was the only software that would let you use OptiSplint. I don't know. Reshape does now. I think it does. Maybe it does. I'm not sure.
Yeah.
So we made the switch to XOCAD and we scheduled surgeries for the following month. And Alex was like, yeah, do you feel like you can learn this to do the digital conversions next month? And I said, yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to. It's been a lot of that, but I kind of like being in those pressure situations and I like having to learn stuff, especially when it comes to technology. I kind of have a mantra in my head that I'm never going to let the machine win. So I'll just keep on throwing my head against the wall until it works.
The first few cases, did you have a backup denture ready to go just in case?
I did, yeah. just we did a 3D printed, which isn't as good as having an analog denture when it comes to the bonding.
Yeah, that's good.
But it worked. I mean, it worked perfect. The bite was great, and that's the moment where we knew this is how we're going to do it every time.
Yeah. So talk about that workflow. I mean, patients come in, you get those initial scans at a consultation. Do you start designing before?
Yeah. So I'll do the whole design pretty much as soon as I can after I get the pre-op scans and the photography and everything, because then I can make... We don't do, they don't do guided surgery. They do freehand surgery for that. But I do make them an out of bounds guide, which is like a clear denture that's troughed out where the multi-units are going to be used.
What do you call an out of bounds guide?
Out of bounds guide, yeah.
Interesting, I've never heard that.
It's the design itself that you're going to convert to the bridge, but it's troughed out digitally where the multi-units would be.
And it still has the pallet so they can. On an upper.
On an upper, yeah. The lower's tougher.
Sure.
So for a lower, what I do is I'll send them the ExoCAD web view of the design overlaid on the pre-op so they can view it and kind of get an idea for where, and then they can plan their multi-unit angulations and their implant placement based on my design. And more or less, I try to keep everything... respectful to the pre-op. I found that it's an easier transition for the patients and it makes it easier for the doctor as well if you're not putting something out into left field.
Yeah, let me ask this question. If you're using fiducial markers, how do you get that? I already forgot what you call it. We call them a template, surgical template, but how do you get that to fit over the fiducial markers?
I put a window where the...
Okay, so just day of surgery, you just, oh, you know where they're going to put them before.
Roughly, yeah.
That's so nice when you work that close with the surgical. surgeon.
Oh, it's great.
I have no idea where they're going to put them.
And if they need me to adjust it, it's pretty easy. Yeah. So, you need to adjust it here a little bit.
Yeah.
It's just a quick, you know, take it over the handpiece or something like that.
That's awesome. So they do the surgery, flap it all out. And then what photogrammetry are you doing?
A micron mapper.
I love that thing.
I know. It's great. It's so easy. The software is so easy to use.
So easy. What I love about it is there's no calibration. You don't have to heat it up. I don't know if you've ever used an ICAM, but it takes like 30 minutes to heat up or something. It's just ridiculous.
I haven't used ICAM personally, but I do work for a prosthodontist in town who uses ICAM. And I've heard it can be a little more challenging. And it's a little more challenging with their software that they have associated with it too.
What about design aspect of it though? Is it all the same data to you once you get it?
Pretty much, yeah. It's more or less all the same. The scan bodies are different because it's a different system. Sure, But as you know, it's all about just kind of picking what screw you want to use and going from there.
So do you take the photogrammetry? Are you in there lining it up? Sometimes.
I'm in and out of the surgical op quite a bit. A lot of the times they'll bring me in and ask me, you know, what do you think about this angle? Do you think this is going to be coming out the incisal or the facial? Or, you know, if there's some palatal bulk and I think it's going to affect the patient's speech, I'll go in and tell them like, hey, I think you could benefit from, you know, putting a 17 degree instead. And they'll usually not give me much pushback and swap it. because it's in the best interest. And I think that collaboration is a good thing. And we're doing that all the time, which is great.
Do you do photogrammetry before they suture?
Yes, yeah. That way we can ensure everything is seated. And a lot of the time too, I'll have them even send me the scans before they suture. The iOS scan? Yeah. And so I can kind of gauge where I need it to be. And we go with a kind of a prosthetic lead tissue healing.
Yeah, tabletop it, I like to say.
Yeah, exactly. And so I can see where the multi-unit interfaces are and I judge everything based off of that and just try to make it convex and cleansable. It's been working really well and they like it because I already have it in the printer while they're suturing and it makes it pretty quick.
Do you scan the Micron Mapper scan bodies or do you swap them out?
We swap them out. It's easier to, it's harder to scan, especially in the surgical environment. everything's all bloody and everything like that. It's hard to scan those tall, scan bodies in the mouth and capture what you need to. So we swap them out with healing abundance.
From which company?
From Mega Gen.
Oh, nice. Is that what you use, Mega Gen.
So not anymore. They use SIN for their forage. They use Mega Gen. for their singles. So when we're doing, you know, single teeth or, you know, 3 unit bridges and stuff like that, they'll use Mega Gen.
Do you like working with Sin? I've not seen one. and I like to say the wild, but I mean, I'm very well the company. They just hasn't made it to Indiana, I guess.
Yeah, I like working with them. Their screws are nice. They have a, like their PRH 30 is their standard straight to multi-unit screw. It's a good screw. It's just a flat seat screw. And then they have an angled screw as well called their smart screw. which I always try to avoid using angulated screw channels whenever I can, because it's kind of a pain. But sometimes you have to.
Sometimes you have to, yeah.
But yeah, I mean, they're good to work with. They get back to me quick. They have all the files that I need, whether it's for Exocad or whether it's for Hyperdent or milling or something like that. So yeah, they have a lot of resources. They've been great to work with.
Yeah, that's good to hear. I really like the people there. I just, unfortunately, haven't needed them much. So, you know, I just don't see the implant here. So what do you print on? What What do you do your temporaries with?
Well, we, so we have two Asiga Max UVs. It's just kind of our bread and butter printers. But we just got a Dentifab Sega Pro. Did you say that Sega? Yeah, Sega, like the video game. Yeah, really? That, yeah, it is. But that thing is fast. It prints those nano ceramic resins, like the rodent resin, sculpture, Titan. But it prints them, it can print a full arch in like 10 minutes or less.
Ten minutes.
Yeah, it's unbelievably fast.
That's insane. That's why we got it. Who, where's it from? I've never heard of it. Where's it from?
I'm not sure where they're out of. They have, they do have an office in Florida, I believe, but I mean, it's a, that printer is amazing. I don't use it for everyday printing because it's kind of challenging to swap resins and stuff like that, unlike the Asiga where you can just like have tanks full of resin. With this one, you have to clean the tank out and everything like that. So that one's just dedicated to our same day all on X cases and our same day crown and bridge temporary cases.
Yeah, but 10 minutes. I do a lot with sprint array and I thought 22 was fast. Geez.
Yeah, that thing is fast and it's only getting faster because they're just constantly updating. and testing the profiles to just make it as quick as possible. I know some people out there are doing full arches in 6 minutes.
It's almost not enough time just to take a break.
I know.
I mean, that's your downtime is usually when you're waiting for the printer.
Exactly. No, there's no downtime with that thing. You just got to get moving.
And the post-processing is about the same for everything else.
Yeah. Nice. Yeah, I use Vita Accent Light Cure to characterize maybe a little bit of ID gum composite.
There are good things about the Vita stain. The Vita is nice. Yeah.
The Vita is nice. Yeah. If you leave it under the light for a little bit, it gets a little thicker and it's kind of similar to like using Neo, which I use a lot of Neo.
Oh yeah.
And we're going to get to that. Yeah. So I like that because the technique feels similar to me. It's kind of in my comfort zone.
It's awesome. Your success rate of seating these things, spot on 100%.
Yeah. I mean, it's really the nice thing about it is it's just so foolproof. I mean, unless you don't screw the scan body down all the way, that's the only time I've seen an issue.
Really what changed it for me, and I call this my game changer, was seating a screw on an analog before light gear and that like pushes out any extra resin and then doing it again. Never had a problem since.
Oh, I haven't tried that.
Yeah, I don't know what sort of damage I might be doing putting a screw in there before. light cured, but every time I do it, you see a bunch of more just like resin come out and you're like, that would have been in there if I didn't do that. And it's really, I've never had a problem getting a screw in since.
I use compressed air to try to get all of the resin off and then I'll cure them with the screws in. Oh, do you?
How does the light penetrate where the screw is? I'm just asking stupid questions now.
I mean.
Cure? I don't know.
Yeah, but I would imagine it's, what I'll do is I'll do that just for the initial cure so it doesn't close up and then I'll take them out and then fully cure it just to make sure there isn't any resin just to clean it out.
Is it just a screw or is it seated into an analog?
Just a screw.
Interesting. Just stick a screw in there and put it in there and hit the button. It's an interesting idea.
Just for just for like an initial little tack here.
Yeah.
Just to make sure that I'm not accidentally tack hearing a little resin. Kind of similar to what you were saying.
Yeah, Interesting. Interesting. And then what? You let the implants integrate for a while, patients come back and then start the final.
Yeah, about four months, they'll come back for their integration check and the doctors will re-tighten down the multi-units just to make sure, take new photogrammetry, take all new data.
Just photos. We do a whole new photogrammetry.
We do, yeah. Why is that? Just to be safe, just to be extra, just to make sure that they're fully tightened down and everything like that. It's such a quick thing to be able to do just to ensure that everything goes smoothly. I think so. It helps me sleep better at night. That's usually when I go in and talk to the patient again too and hear what they want from their design and I'll do a full redesign most of the time.
So do you get in there and chat with the patients?
Yeah, quite a bit.
Nice.
I like it. I talked to them about shade and I talked to them about what they're wanting from their smile, whether they want something that's more Hollywood or something that's a little more characteristic, or maybe they have old pictures of themselves that they bring in that they say, I kind of want you to base it off of this. And those are my favorite kind of cases to do because it's really personal. And I think the patients really appreciate it too. Maybe they had a diastema between 8 and 9 that they want to replicate. That's always the good stuff for me.
100%.
So I like being involved with patients. I think they like it too.
We did one on a gentleman that had a chip, pretty good sized chip on #9, and he wanted that replicated.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, and it was a lot of fun, but we couldn't get it to look like a chip designing it. like rounded it too much. So we had to put the chip in there ourselves physically after the fact. I think just in the green state, yeah.
He loves it. That's cool.
He loves it, yeah. And his wife was like, yeah, I don't know who he would be without it. That's so cool. I would love that. Yeah, you'd get a chance to fix it. Why wouldn't you? But you know what? No, he's had it his whole life. So it's the little things, right?
That's really cool. Yeah, it's the little things like that really elevate the job, right?
Yeah.
Those really personal touches with the patient.
So you talk to the patient and you do another prototype.
Yeah. So we do another prototype to make sure that the bite's all good, that they like the shape, you know, the basic shade. just because we don't have obviously as many options shade wise with the resins that we do, zirconia. But I want the patient to make sure that they're happy with the initial design itself.
Yep.
And I have them sign a waiver saying, you know, you're good to go to final. I like the shape, I like the shade, I like the function. And then that way I can take the exact same design and manufacture it in zirconia and titanium. So we do all of our cases over a tie bar.
Every single one.
Every single one, yeah. There's a couple benefits in my opinion to that other than strength. Just I like that we're milling the implant interface one-to-one rather than dealing with zirconia shrinkage.
Makes sense?
Because you're putting a lot of trust into the zirconia manufacturer to be 100% correct, right? So if you're milling titanium one-to-one at the interface, you don't have to worry about it.
Are you milling your own bars?
Yeah, we just started doing that about a year ago. We have a Versa mill and it's fantastic. That was a learning curve was learning how to mill bars.
How so?
It's just so much more involved because I do the blender split bar. And so you have to make sure the bar mills out perfectly. Otherwise the superstructure will fit.
So you leave Exocad and put everything in blender.
Yeah. So I have the hybrid itself straight to multi-unit and then I bring it into blender and I reverse engineer design the bar off of that. And that's really nice. I really like that because even the intaglio surface is going to be the same for the patient. They know what the tissue pressure is going to be like.
From their temporary, it's exactly the same.
From their temporary, yeah, exactly.
So even if the temporary is a little uneven, that bar is going to have that exact same unevenness.
Yeah, you don't have to go in and redesign the Intaglio.
Why doesn't Exocad have this yet? I imagine they're working on it.
I actually just got a beta version of Exocad 3.3 and it does have it. I got a little training on it from Johnny Jackson yesterday.
Oh, Johnny Jackson, yeah.
So he showed me the whole workflow. I'm really excited about it. It's really cool.
Without giving too much away, does it look like something that's going to help or be better?
Oh, I think so. Yeah. The one thing about Blender that's kind of challenging is when you bring it into CAM. When I bring it into HyperDent, Blender has a way of making construction data, but to me it's not, it could be better. And so I'm having to mark everything in HyperDent myself, the screw channels and the interfaces and the emergence profile and the margin of the bar, where in Exocad it's going to have all that in the construction data and it's going to bring it right in. And that's going to save me a ton of time.
That sounds like a pain in the ***. Do it the other way.
Yeah.
And you do titanium on everything, right, for the bars, obviously.
Yep. Yeah.
And use OEM SIN screws.
Sometimes we'll change the screw depending on the material thickness. A lot of the time I just change it to the standard Nobel style MUA screws. You don't need as much space anymore between the multi-unit and the interface.
Because it's titanium.
It's titanium. And so it allows you to bring that screw lower. And one thing that's a real pain is when you have the screw sticking out at the top of the bar, because it makes cementing it awful. And I just, by principle, I don't want the screw Screws sitting between the titanium and the zirconia.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, a lot of the time I'll use that smaller screw to avoid that.
Interesting. What do you do, sandblast it to cement? What cement do you use?
I use a GC GCM One. I like it 'cause it has a primer.
Yeah.
So you can prime the cavity side of the superstructure and you can prime the bar, the retentive surface of the bar itself. I've used other cements though. I've used like Ivachlor multi-link. That's just great too.
Sure. And then you seat and what, provide a bite guard?
Yep. Yeah. Night guard for every patient as well. So I'll design the night guard on the design of the hybrid itself.
And you're doing Mio on that, right?
Yeah. Every single one.
So you just got back from what, DS World with Mio?
Yep.
Yeah. How was that?
It was fun. I guess attendance was quite a bit lower than it had been in the past years.
Is this your first time at DS World?
It's my first time at DS World, yeah.
I thought technicians weren't allowed. Just kidding.
I know. There was one lab there.
Oh, really? On the showroom.
Yeah.
Smart.
I know. But Mio has a pretty big presence chair side as well, especially Mio 850 with Emacs and everything like that. So there's room for it in the clinics for sure, whether you need to add a contact to the crown or whether you need to adjust the shade or. I mean, I use Neo 850 here at the lab here just on Emacs because it's so nice to be able to use it pre-crystallization.
So how did you learn Meo?
I learned Meo when we got our first mill. We didn't have space for it in our first clinic. So we bought, I mean, this is kind of a long story. We bought a used Zircon Zan M1 from eBay. eBay. I had to learn it with no support. Yeah, we had to learn. I had to learn it with no support. It was a nightmare having to learn how to mill no support.
That's scary buying something on eBay, man. I mean, you don't know how long it's running. Is the spindle any good? Is it...
I mean, I got to say, that thing is still going strong.
Is it really still using it? Nice.
Yeah, it's a great mill. I have to say it's actually a great mill. So we didn't have room for it. So we have a ceramist buddy in town named Gaetano. He owns a ceramic studio called Functional Art Studio. And he let us... use his space to put our mill in. And so while we were there, I did several cases with him where he trained me how to use Mio. And that was the first time I ever used it. That was a couple of years ago. I got a lot of experience from him and a lot of knowledge from him. And just because I was always a denture technician, I'd never thought about chroma or value or anything or opacity or translucency or anything like that because it's on the denture tooth card.
I don't need to worry about it.
And so he taught me all of that stuff and started teaching me how to use Mio. And I I just kind of had to hit the ground running because we had cases to get done. So I just started using it on every case and just trying to get better and better and better. I started posting my cases on the Mio Liquid Ceramic Users Group initially, just trying to get, you know, looking for advice. And I think that's where Kevin Mahan saw my work probably getting better. out to me and asked me if I wanted to go demo at Lab Day West. And I was kind of in like a yes phase of my life. I didn't think I was the right person to do it because I didn't have a lot of experience, but I just said, yeah, sure, I'll give it a shot.
So how long, how were you doing it before you demoed?
I was probably using Mio for about six months. That's it? Before I demoed.
And even before that, you weren't doing it a lot because you're a mostly removable technician.
Yeah, exactly.
Wow, so you took to it really well and quickly. I mean, It's hard even for traditional ceramists because of the difference in the workflow, the material. The names alone confuse me.
I know, yeah.
I mean, you grasped this in six months. Wow.
I don't like being bad at things. So, and I got to see my work in the mouth, which was really helpful. Huge. Like, oh, I can see what I'm, what I shouldn't be doing here, you know? And then I studied a lot of other people's work and I studied a lot of pictures of just natural teeth. and gingiva. And so I was, always looking at pictures of Kite's work and Alina and Amanda and James Choi. Yeah, so you stalked him. Yeah, I stalked him, yeah, as one does, as one does. all their color charts were really helpful for me too. So I would see what they were doing and I would think, wonder, how did they do that? Why were they using that color here? And try to emulate it. And it's kind of like being in music school in a lot of ways. That's how you learn, you know, how to play guitar or play an instrument. Like if you're learning jazz or something, you learn other people's solos and then that's how you build your own techniques. And I kind of had the same approach.
So you copied their work until you got good.
I wouldn't say copy.
I took inspiration. Were you an artist? Do you have that artist ability growing up?
I wouldn't say so. I mean, most kids like to draw, but I was never into painting or anything like that. I was always into music, but I don't think there's really much of A pathway from music to putting me on teeth.
No, but usually when we talk to these big meal users, you know, they have an art background or they did, you know, art class or they drew as children or something, but you never really had that, I figured you had to have a little bit of... that talent. Maybe there is hope for me. I don't know.
I mean, I did have quite a bit experience from characterizing the 3D prints with the Lycure resin. I mean, it's a totally different way to do it.
Is, but I get where you're going.
Yeah. So I would say that was probably my entry into just doing that period. Something like that.
So how'd your first demo go?
It was nerve-wracking. I was so nervous because Alina was there and James Choi was there. And yeah, and so My first demo, I was really, really nervous. And Lab Day gets pretty intense. Even Lab Day West.
West is a pretty decent sized show.
It is, yeah. So I think I was shaking quite a bit the first time I did it. I had people surrounding me watching me. But it got easier. Every single time it got easier.
So was the situation like a camera over you or was it people hovering real close?
No, it was people just, you know, the Lab Day West doesn't have the camera set up. It was just people come around and swarm you around the booth.
I don't know what's worse, people that close or it being projected. projected that big.
The projector brings in a challenge of its own because you have to keep everything in focus and in the projector. And it's so easy when you're in that Zen mode of you're putting Neo on something to move everything around the way you need it. But when you're in front of it, when you're holding it under a projector, you need to hold it in a certain way, which can kind of break your focus.
Yep. So that was West what year?
That would have been 2023.
My gosh, this is not long ago.
Or maybe even 2024. Oh my gosh. So much has happened since then. So I did that and then I must have done a good job because they asked me if I wanted to start going to labs to train labs. And so I do that every once in a while. I travel around with Nino Rapuano. We go to big labs and work with Mia with them. Nina and I have a great time.
No, yeah.
We always look for good. Everybody has a good time.
Yeah, Nina's great.
Oh yeah, she's so much fun. She's the best.
So teaching a course, I mean, this is different than, you know, hands-on for whatever it is at lab day, what, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour?
Yeah.
Did you put together a whole program, slideshow and everything?
No, I didn't put together my own slideshow. I more or less just go with the Jensen supplied ones, and Nina usually has that taken care of, and then and she and I will go and explain the system and how it works. A lot of the time the labs already have experience with Mio. They're just looking to up their game.
Oh, I see. Especially with full arch.
Yeah. She brings me more around to the labs that are looking to learn full arch with Mio and up their game with that.
So what do you do? You show up with like unstained work and everybody kind of follows you and how you do it? I mean.
Yeah, so I'll supply them with something to mill one of my designs, and then I'll mill it and sinter it. And then I'll bring it with me. And then they have all their samples as well. And we'll go over the different firing cycles. I do it in stages as most, like usually three to four fires. Kind of depends on the clinic and what they're looking to offer. Typically I'll show, you know, I'll apply neo on the teeth and then fire it. And while it's firing, I'll go around and help them work on their samples. Then it comes to color neo pink on the tissue and then finally structure.
Yeah, it's so weird to me. that structure goes on last. For someone that doesn't do it, structure to me sounds like it should be under everything, but nobody asks me.
It works really well going over, I think, because it kind of goes over the surface of everything that you've done, and it plays really well with light and how light interacts with the surface underneath. And you can add that surface texture on top, whether it be over teeth or whether it be over tissue, you can add stippling or muscle attachments and stuff like that.
That's awesome.
And so, and the neoping structure is low fusing, so you have to fire it last. it fires at a lower temperature than the regular colors and the glaze.
Yeah. How much have you traveled? Have you been all over the US or? I've traveled a lot this last year.
You like it? All over the US. I do. I do. I enjoy it. I like, you know, I haven't had the chance to travel a lot lately since I had kids. So I get to travel and traveling with Nina and Kevin is always fun. Jensen's such a great company. They take such good care of us.
Super great. Yeah. We've done a few things with them, few shows, and they're just good people. Simple as that.
They are. They're great. They're always understanding if for some reason I can't do something and never hold it against me. And they're extremely supportive.
Yeah, they're very willing to help.
Yeah.
All the labs that do them. What's the biggest lab? You don't have to say name if you don't want to, but what's the biggest lab you've gone into train? Like, was there like 20 people you had to handheld?
I recently, yeah, I won't name names, but I recently went to a really, really large lab. It was probably a 300 person lab. And I went to their Intimidating their advanced department a little bit. The course was only for about 20 people, but 20 people is a lot. That's a lot of ovens to make sure.
A lot of hands on.
Yeah. With the courses, it's always the ovens that'll get you. got to go in early and make sure the ovens are working to your liking.
Do you go in there and reprogram them?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, geez.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I make sure that the ovens are programmed for success with Mio, especially with those large bridges. Everyone's trying to to make that portion faster, but you really can't. I just really don't think you can. You have to respect the material.
Yeah. So how does it work if somebody wants someone to come out and teach me, and maybe you don't know this answer, but there's a few of you that are doing this, you know, like you mentioned, Amanda and Choi and you and I don't know who else, but.
I think they all do it a little differently because I know that James Choi does his own private courses that Jensen supports.
I see.
I mostly do the bigger labs and it's more, I think it's more of a Nina thing where she'll have a lab reach out to her and ask for training for Mio and then she can kind of determine who's going to be the best person to come training this lab. Yeah.
They're not picking you individually like, I want this guy.
I don't think so. I mean, I think sometimes, but I don't think a lot of the time. Maybe, Yeah, I do enjoy it. Some courses go better than others, depending on, different things like ovens or how willing people are to learn the material.
Just the students, yeah, how engaged they are.
Yeah, because, it's as a technician, you get used to the things that you like and you can, we technicians, we fear change. So I think some people can be a little intimidated when there's an expectation that someone's coming in to teach you something new.
You ever have an issue teaching those guys that were? Back in the day, I stacked 30 layers on. and BFM, that kind of thing.
I actually haven't run into that. Okay. I think a lot of that's Nina. I think a lot of that's Nina. I think that she knows.
She blocks them for you. Yeah. Have you done Chicago? I think you were doing a table in Chicago, weren't you?
I did, yeah. I just had my first Lab Day Chicago at the last one. That was so much fun.
Yeah. Was that your first time there or first time?
That was my first time. First time at Lab Day Chicago. That was wild.
Wow, I can't believe it took you that long to get there. Well, I guess you are way out there in the West.
Yeah, I'd been to Lab Day West twice before I went to Chicago, but I had a ton of fun. Chicago was surreal. We had this big dinner with Jensen Dental with all of the other neo KOLs. I felt such imposter syndrome. Did you really? Because it was like, I did. Because it was like being in music school, but if you were in music school with all your guitar, it was like being in the room with Jimi Hendrix and Steve Rayvon and all those guys. Just like, oh my God, there's Kite, there's James, there's Alina, there's Amanda, there's Jack Marano.
Oh man, yeah. That's great.
But it's such a great group.
Yeah, but you're on that Mount Rushmore of meal users now, man. You're there.
I'm just trying to make each case a little bit better than the last. And I like pushing myself and trying new things. I just took a course myself with James.
Oh, really?
Sarcastic.
Yeah, nice.
It was amazing. I learned so much. I mean, to go and learn from one of the developers of Mia was such an opportunity.
I wonder if he'll come and take a course from you. Maybe he'll learn some.
James, no. He doesn't need to take a course from me. I need to go take another course from him. He's phenomenal. That's great.
I'd love to see one sometime.
Yeah, it was great. And it wasn't just Mio either, his course. It was all about morphology and smile design.
See, that's the cool stuff to me.
Yeah, it was a really, really advanced course, but I took away so many tips. I mean, I was just working on a final today. I was thinking, all the new things I'm doing because I went to James's course. He's a great educator.
Did you learn anything in your life? They're like, crap, I've been doing it wrong this whole time.
Or looking at it wrong. I don't know if they're necessarily-.
Looking at it wrong.
In certain ways. It was more like looking at things in a deeper way rather than surface level, if that makes any sense.
It does, yeah.
I don't think there's really a wrong way to use Mio. I mean, it is make it your own, right? So I think, you know, as long as the end product is good, you've done good. But I did learn things that make the process easier. You know, his big thing is setting yourself up for the next fire in the fire that you're working on, whether you're starting on tissue a little bit with teeth or adding a little bit of structure when you're coloring tissue. And it's a lot of those little things, how to work with the glaze in a certain way so it doesn't fill up the interproximals and everything like that. And he just has, he's been working with it so long and he has such a deep understanding of the material that You can take so much from that course.
That's awesome. So obviously you're not just doing full arches.
No, we do crown and bridge.
You're doing all the other stuff.
Yeah, no, we do, we still do dentures, still do, you know, single unit crowns, a lot of implant crowns. surgical guides, night guards, all that stuff.
What's your denture workflow? Are you doing those printed, milled?
Printed only for immediates, and then we'll do milled finals.
I.
Don't mill the dentures myself just because I don't want to take up, we only have two mills, I don't want to take up the mill. It takes forever to mill a denture, so I send them to Blake Barksdale, the mill for me. That's been great. Then I'll bring them back and characterize them and everything like that.
But you're still doing all the designs for them.
Yeah, all the designs are in-house. The only thing that we outsource are partial frameworks and just the milled dentures.
Yeah. Are you the only technician?
No, I have one other technician that works for me. She came in with no dental experience. Her name's Bianca. She came in with no dental experience whatsoever. And she's doing fantastic. She's using Neo quite a bit too.
So all trained under you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Talk about that experience. How did you take someone with zero dental, didn't even know that, teeth have numbers to use in Mio.
Well, I started off really slow. I first started teaching her on how to use the 3D printer and how to characterize things in the 3D printer, full arches and temporary crowns and stuff like that. And I taught her about, you know, translucency and opacity and halos and chroma and all that stuff. And I just started her off really slow. And then I started her soon after that with putting Mio on single unit posterior crowns, which is a really good launching point. And she's just taken it off from there. So you can do full arches now. She does a great job.
Really? Nice.
The big thing that she's learning now, and I think the hardest thing to teach a new technician is design, just because when you have no experience, you're coming in with no knowledge of function or occlusion or aesthetics. And so that's understandably taking her longer to learn. But one thing I like about the environment here at the lab is that you're not On an assembly line, just doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. I've been in big labs where I've had to do that, and that's not an environment that I really like or that I really want to have at my lab, so I encourage people to learn how to take their cases from start to finish, because... As a finisher, you understand so much more about design. I can't tell you how many times I've been finishing a case and been so mad at the designer version of myself for like, why did you do that?
Yeah.
Dumb, dumb idiot. I think that's really valuable. And then being able to see their work in the mouth too. Yeah, 100% so fast.
But there's only two of you. all better know how to do everything from start to finish if there's only two.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because we don't have a small amount of work. It's a lot for two.
How many doctors? Two doctors.
We have three doctors. We have another doctor on the way. We do some outside lab work, like selective outside lab work for a couple of other doctors. But that's about it. We can only take on as much as we can right now.
Yeah. Do you own the lab?
I just became an owner.
Oh, nice.
I just I just bought an owner.
Congratulations, baby. I don't know.
Thank you.
Okay, good.
No, it's been great. So Dr. Spoonster and Dr. Smith, they both approached me about a year ago and they asked me if I'd be interested in separating the lab. lab from the practice, making it its own LLC. And if I'd be interested in buying as an equal partner. And I'd always wanted to be a business owner. I always wanted to be a lab owner. And it's nice because I got to buy into a lab that already has a steady flow of work and the equipment's already there.
Yeah, pretty big. Yeah. It's a pretty helpful.
Yeah.
And all your work is across the hall. I mean, you're all in the same building, right?
Yeah, for now. I mean, eventually we're going to have to move the lab into its own building because we're going to need more. Not big, big, but right now our bottleneck is the milling.
Because you just don't have the room for it.
We just don't have the space for it, yeah. We have a zirconia mill and we have a wet mill for titanium and e-max and PMMA. And we don't have room for any more mills, but we really need another one. So we're eventually going to have to move the lab and do its own commercial space.
All right, well, you're the business owner now. It's your problem now.
Yeah, I know it. I know it. I'm feeling the pressure of that too. No, they're great guys. I love being partners with them because they're both nerds about the lab too. And they come in and they like to learn stuff about the lab. So we love getting new equipment and playing with new software or mills or sintering ovens and stuff like that. So they're really good partners to have.
Are they those dentists that want to get equipment long before anyone's ready for it? You know those dentists that are like, oh my God, I just saw this magazine ad for this. We should get this. And they get all excited. And you're like, calm down.
They would say that they're not so much like that. They kind of defer to me on what equipment would work or not. when we were looking at printers initially, sprint ray is huge in the dental clinic field. And they were thinking like, yeah, maybe we should just get sprint rays. That's what all the dentists are using. And I thought, yeah, I'd rather, I personally believe in always using open equipment. And so I wanted to make sure that whatever printer we got could use whatever resin we want, because resins are just evolving practically daily, it feels like. So I wanted to make sure. So I went on forums as I normally do and I asked like, well, lab technicians, what printers do you guys like? And hand over foot, so many people were suggesting Asiga. And the Asigas have just, as everyone said, they've just been great. They're open source. They just work. Yeah, I love them.
Can you use burnt ray resins in Asiga?
I'm sure you could, but it's not validated.
Yeah, okay.
Asiga is nice because you can take any resin that's not already validated for the Asiga, send it to them, and they will make a profile for the Asiga. Now, I don't know if they would do that for Sprint Ray resins or if Sprint Ray would have a problem with that. I imagine it would be some sort of issue there. And I'm sure some people have figured out how to print the Onyx tough on a Nasiga, but it's just not a foray I'm looking at getting into. I like the rodent resins quite a bit. They're strong.
I've heard he thinks about it, yeah.
They're great. So yeah, I use the rodent resins for our hybrids and for our crown and bridge temps. It's been great.
Why are you printing temps? Why don't you just mill the final?
It's the same idea as our All-on-X. And so a lot of the time what we'll do, especially if we're doing an anterior case or even a full mouth crown case, is it's the same workflow as I want to get them into 3D printed temporary so they can approve it.
And then balance it out and everything.
Because I can take the same exact design and mill it.
But if you're just doing like a single posterior.
A single posterior, no, a single posterior, the doctors would use CEREC.
Oh, so you have that in there too.
Yeah, I don't personally use it, but the doctors do use it. And so, you know, yeah, like a #30, they would probably make a CEREC crown, unless they want a really nice lab crown, then they'll have me make it. But more and more, they're getting away from the CEREC and having lab-made crowns done.
So you would still do those same day or no?
I don't do hardly anything. the same day except for anything surgery related or temporary.
Do they give you a lot of time? I mean.
Yeah, I asked for four weeks for a zirconia for the Tybar final.
Oh, four weeks? Wow. Yeah. How much time do you get for a single crown?
Single crown? Three weeks.
No kidding.
Yeah.
It's funny because here in the commercial lab space, Five days is too long.
I know, but I think they understand, because they're in the lab so much, they understand how many other cases we're working on at a time. And so I'm fortunate in that. I'm fortunate that they're really understanding with the turnaround times. And oftentimes I'll get the case done early. And then we'll notify the patient, hey, guess what? Your case is done, your crown is done early.
They'll fill the schedule.
And they'll fill the schedule. The doctor's excited to fill the schedule. The patient's excited because they're getting their crown early. So it's a win-win for everybody.
And you tell them, don't get used to it.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, not to say there aren't rush cases. There are rush cases from time to time, but I would say the majority of it, the turnaround times are really lenient.
You working crazy hours or you got yourself pretty set up pretty nice?
Right now I'm working crazy hours because I have a ton of work. But I would say normal time, I'm probably working like 50 hours a week, 55 hours a week. That's normal. It's just more than 40, but I think it's normal.
There's no such thing as 40 hour work week. Yeah.
And at the same time on my Sometimes I don't know if I ever feel like I'm really off the clock, because I'm always researching materials and everything like that. Or we at the clinic, they work the weekends.
Oh, really?
Emergency emergency.
Okay. Yeah.
And so sometimes they'll need me to communicate with them a little bit over the weekend. I never go in, but they, sometimes they need just, hey, what's going on with the scan here? Does the scan look okay? Or something like that.
Yeah. Wow. You are invested. I love it, man. What's next for you? You got Chicago next year. You've signed up.
Chicago.
Yeah.
I'll be at Chicago. I'm thinking, I'm thinking probably Lab Day West as well, because it's so close. And I can take some days off and bookend it and take the family to Disneyland or something like that. So just more Mio, just working on the business.
Moving eventually.
Moving eventually. doing a lot of research into mills. That's pretty much it. I just took over running the business, so I'm kind of settling into that.
How does it work? Are you billing out work to them?
Yes.
Interesting. It's kind of a strange dynamic.
I know the practices pay the lab a bill for our work and it, you know, it's discounted, of course, from like a fair market value.
And then you pay him rent.
Yeah, exactly.
And if they don't send you enough work to pay rent, then you got a problem.
Then I got a problem. But it's been steady. But we also have the outside work as well. I can take on whatever outside lab work, outside clinic work I want to.
That's awesome. Jonathan, man, that's some cool stuff. I love what you're doing. I love seeing you out there online, just killing it with Mio. And I didn't realize you're doing so much. I didn't understand your situation. I didn't know you're, I want to say in office, but you're not, because you're now your own lab in an office. But Sounds cool.
It's kind of an interesting dynamic, but I mean, working in office has been great for me. I love it.
Oh, a lot of people do. I mean, the chance to see the work.
I love seeing the doctors. I love seeing the patients. It's great. It doesn't come without its headaches, of course.
Of course.
Just being there is, just being there and surrounded and just kind of in the trenches can be really fun. Especially surgery. Surgery is, all in ex-surgery is really fun because we have a team coming from Arizona Every single one they do fully sedated? Yeah, unless the patient can't clear and then they'll do conscious sedation. But almost every single patient's under general anesthesia.
Interesting.
I get to be in there a lot. I've learned so much just working with the doctors and working with surgeons and everything like that.
It's amazing. That first time, the blood didn't bother you.
I was worried that it would, but no, we've had fainters, you know, some dentalists since I've seen fainters, but And I was worried I would be one of them, but I was okay.
Yeah. Jonathan, thank you so much, man. Super appreciate it.
Thank you.
I'm glad we finally made this happen.
Me too. That was fun.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing the story. And I guess we'll see you in Chicago.
I'll see you then.
All right, man. Have a good one.
You too.
A big thanks to Jonathan for coming on the podcast and telling your amazing story. I'm really sorry. I was unable to attend the recording, and you know I would have loved to have picked your brain on some of the Mio techniques you use, but I will say Elvis was amazing, and I know he loves to geek out on photogrammetry and everything related to this conversation. We hope to see you in Chicago, and I will be sure to try and see a demo of yours. I know you love your micron mapper, Elvis, but hearing it from somebody else just to say it might actually be pretty cool. We can't just take your word for it, you know?
I know.
Even though I will, because you are pretty smart. Thanks again, Jonathan, and good luck on growing your lab.
All right, everybody. We'll talk to you next week when we're all back from trips. So have a good one.
Have a great week. Bye. Welcome to Dysfunction Junction.
The views and opinions expressed on the Voices from the Bench podcast are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the host or Voices from the Bench LLC.