Hello, Voices of the Bench community. John Isherwood from Ivaclar here, inviting you to join us this February at LMT Lab Day in Chicago. Over the three-day show, we're excited to be offering 16 different lecture programs for you to choose from. Simply log on to labday.com/ivaclar, that's labday.com/ivaclar, to check out our lineup and register for these amazing courses. Looking forward to seeing you in the Windy City this February. 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 406 of Voices from the Bench. My name is Elvis.
My name's Barbara, and happy freaking New Year, everybody.
Happy 20! I had to think about it.
Got a six. It's going to be my year. And it's episode 406, right?
Oh my Lord.
Yeah.
What are we going to do? This is epic.
Let's do it.
How was your New Year's? Do anything fun.
I watched the Miami-Ohio State game. Couldn't believe Miami won. And then I actually made it to midnight. So yes.
What?
I was.
Wow.
I know.
I was asleep by 10. Yep.
I was just proud of myself for making it to midnight because I never do.
Yeah. I don't know how many people do. Is it even a thing for people to go out on New Year's Eve anymore? I don't know.
I mean, I'm sure for people a lot younger than us, but I know people. It never really was for me. I always just played it safe and stayed home and hung out. And so I pretty much still do that.
Yeah, I think maybe when you're 21, that's a thing, but then you realize you can do that any night.
Pretty much. Good point. Good point.
Well, you know what? It is 2026 and we are already looking at a fantastic year for us and the podcast.
Oh my God, it's going to be nonstop.
It's going to be pretty busy for a while. So just in a few weeks, both of us, we're going to be in Las Vegas for the Vision 21 meeting. Always our favorite meeting to start the year. We will not be recording the podcast. It's I'm not really set up for that, but we're going to be there just doing some networking, hanging out with some friends. Who knows? Maybe we'll learn something. I don't know.
Yes.
And then, of course, it's off to the greatest week in the year, and that's Cal Lab and Lab Day Chicago. So Cal Lab started off on February 19th and 20th. headed up by our very own Barb.
Yes, sir.
How excited are you?
I'm getting super excited, man. I'm ready.
Yeah.
I am.
I mean, it's like around the corner.
I know. I'm in my head. psychologically, mentally, physically, like I'm all in. So yeah, I'm excited.
That's awesome. We are so happy and excited. Everyone, if you don't already go to Cal Lab, go to Cal Lab. Right on. Support Barb. 100 years of Cal Lab, first female chair, Barb's first year.
That's amazing. Thank you for the support. Thank you.
Oh, absolutely. And then we're going to roll right into Lab Day Chicago, which is of course February 18th of the 20th. And yes, we will once again be recording with the amazing people of Ivoclar in their ballroom right across from the registration desk.
Phew, then we get March off.
Well, maybe we're trying to fill it. I'm kidding.
All right. Then, April 9th to the 11th is the DLAT, or the DLAT meeting in Texas. If you guys are looking for a really good show that isn't the expensive giant that is Chicago, and I bet it's a lot warmer, it's a great show to attend. We love it there.
Absolutely. Haven't been in a few years, happy to go back.
And then, my God, Elvis and I are so excited. We're going back to Mallorca, Spain. Exocad Insights 2026. And that is April 30th to May 1st. So we are gonna be busy, busy. Thank you, Exocad, for that.
Yeah, if you love Exocad and if you love an amazing beachside conference on an exotic island.
Yes, sir.
This is the show for you.
Yep.
And I can't stress this enough. It is literally exhibit hall, cross the street, beach. Baltic Sea. It's just insane to me.
Beautiful.
It's awesome.
All the history, the amazing food, the amazing people, the amazing Exocad, all of the lectures. It's just, we can't say anything more than amazing. Well, we could, but I'll just keep saying amazing.
Amazing. So make sure you come and join us at any of these shows. Of course, we're going to put up dates and links on this episode show notes. So if you want to look into registering or travel arrangements, please go check it out and we hope to see you there. Right. So Barb, we started this podcast in 2018. It's funny how it's now 2026 and we're just now having guests on that probably should have been on years ago.
I would say I would agree.
Yeah, I don't know how we kind of, we don't put people off intentionally. I don't know. It's just timing and everything. But This week, we get to talk to Stuart Steinbach, one of the many Steinbachs that make up the Whitmix legacy. Stuart talks about his history with Whitmix and his roles over the years, but Stuart wanted to expand his dental knowledge and love, and he actually went out to start, run, and build some pretty impressive array of companies.
I'll say.
From clear aligners to carbon to a startup 3D printer to an ortho lab, Stuart now Cal finds himself at Digital Dental working with the company that brought us Crystal Ultra and the only US-made milling machine. So join us as we chat with Stuart Steinbach. Voices from the bench. The interview. Barb and I are really excited today because we get to bring on someone that I know I've known you for quite a while. We've shared a few triathlon teams together.
I was thinking that too.
Yes. And I don't think you've done much else in the industry other than I don't know.
Did I even swim on your team? Barb and I raced a couple.
No, you actually didn't have to that year. Yeah, we'll talk about that too. Stuart Steinbach, how are you, sir?
Good morning. Good afternoon.
Good to have you. We've been wanting you on our podcast forever.
Yeah, it's a long time coming, sir.
Well, when you're an introvert, you know, it can be slow happening.
You're not an introvert. Come on.
I'm an innie, not an outie.
So there's not a lot of, I don't know, dynasty families in dental lab, but Steinbach kind of is. I mean, Barb, would you agree?
Yes, sir, I would agree.
Yeah. So Stuart, let's hear the story, man. Let's hear all about how you intertwine with the Whitmix and the Steinbachs and all of that.
Yeah, take us way back, way back to like, you know, high school, college, all that fun stuff.
Yeah, well, like grade school, I got to mow the grass out of Whit Mix.
There you go.
Same building that's in now.
Same building. Same building. The parking lot went in there. was a lot more grass to mow than there is today.
*** ** * *****.
Who was your dad?
My dad was Alan, or is Alan, and he became president in 1985.
Okay.
85, wow.
So you're a direct despondent of that. So of course you were doing grass. What else would you be doing?
Well, who started it? Did the Steinbach start it?
Yeah, so my great-grandfather and his brother actually had Falls City Dental Specialty, a dental lab. He had been a denture technician in World War I. My great, great uncle. And my grandfather was an accountant at Bernheim Distillery when prohibition was passed.
Nice. Distillery, right up my alley.
Yes. So we actually still have his books. He had his own little brand called Panther Pea. And my dad has his recipe books. But prohibition was passed. He lost his job. They closed the distillery. And so he joined up with his brother. And so that's the earliest articles of incorporation papers that we can find.
Wow, that's insane. Did you get to know your great-grandfather at all or was he gone?
He was gone when I was growing up. I knew my great-grandmother. She used to babysit me and we'd have orange sherbet ice cream and she'd have the little candies in the crystal jar, which was nice.
Yeah. Early memories. Yeah.
But he met a dentist from southern Indiana. We're a border state. He met a dentist from southern Indiana who had six patented features on an egg beater to whip and mix inlay casting investment. And so that was That was really the start of whip mix was my...
Oh, say that again. He had a what?
He had six patentable features on an egg beater to whip and mix inlay casting investment for shiny, smoothier castings.
Wow.
Okay, so first of all, it was just a modified... An egg beater.
It was, yeah. It was the old hand crank egg beaters.
Yeah.
And what was different about it? Like thicker wire?
No, I mean, it had a paddle at the end instead of like the little mixing things that you would see, right? And like a normal, like the old mixers that you would do with the little mixers you'd stick into it. I'm not sure. It had a little cup to hold the inlay casting investment, like a little rubberized cup. I couldn't tell you, Elvis, what the six patentable features were, but I think there's got to be at least two of them. But right, as opposed to hand incorporation with just a with a regular mixing knife, like we like most people still do at the bench for a quick pour on stone.
I'm sure it's all public domain now, right? The patents have run out probably.
They probably have, but I don't even know if anybody cast anymore. So that doesn't matter. That's true.
That's true.
Do you guys have pictures of it?
We have some of the original wit mixers, yeah, up in our... up in the museum there at the building.
That's great. That is how this podcast goes.
And we do have some of the early advertising pieces, which are pretty cool. So he started marketing that and the company began to grow and we added, finally we added, Kerr had a bunch of patents. at the time on using Cristobalite for gypsum bonded investments for gold casting. We finally found a way around that and started, that was beauty cast. And then we added silky rock on the dive stone side. And that became really the genesis. So the company's named after an egg beater.
Yeah.
And then. That's great. Yeah. And then after World War II, my grandfather, who was an engineer, came back after the Pacific Theater. He started up a friendship with Dr. Charlie Stewart, who had the first semi-adjustable articulator. And so in 1965, he licensed the rights to that, to the baby Stewart. And then I was born eight years later, first grandchild. I'm the first grandchild born eight years later. And somehow my name's Stewart, spelled exactly like Charlie Stewart.
They knew exactly what the hell your name was going to be.
Yeah. My mother swears Alexander was the other option, but I guess luckily for me and my career, baby Stuart stuck.
Yeah.
So the company's named for an egg beater and I'm named for an articulator.
Is that on your dating profile when you were younger?
No.
So did you know that growing up? Did you know that story? How young were you guys when you talked about it?
Oh, I think I've been at Witmix 15 years before I finally put two and two together.
You're kidding me.
My dad won't admit it, but you know, I mean, come on, what's the probability of that happening? So yeah.
So you said you were mowing grass at Witmix. When did you actually start as an employee of the company?
Yeah, I joined January of 1999. which was just a couple of months after we acquired Intratech, the furnace company out of Texas.
Oh, wow. So at that point, I mean, it was much farther than just the egg beater. By then, they were into more equipment by then, I imagine.
Yeah, I mean, we still have the, you know, the whip mixer that everybody has or had at the time that just won't die. So we had the mixing equipment, we had the model trimmers, Articulators, we were one of the largest manufacturers of articulators, particularly for the school market.
Yeah.
And we weighed all the investment, all the, you know, all the Serafina, high temp, Formula One had just been launched. Formula One, I'm sorry, Fast Fire 15 and PC 15. before Formula One.
I always knew you guys as like a stone company. Is that what you would consider to be your largest branding?
At that time, it was probably 50-50 between stones and a casting investment. And then the equipment that wrapped around it. So that was, yeah, so that was a lot of it. We added the porcelain and the pressing ovens. And so those were our primary product clients at the time.
And were you groomed to come into Witmix?
No, I was going to do any. I was going to do anything but join Witmix.
Oh, you were one of those.
I was never a rebel or did you just not want to go in the family business?
Yeah, I really wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. So I got a business degree from the University of Cincinnati. And when I moved back to Louisville, I opened up a business power washing decks. and sealing them and doing odd jobs like that. But I really thought I'd end up starting my own business.
Really? How'd the deck business go?
Well, it did great until about October, November when I got really cold.
You forgot to save.
Yeah. And my dad goes, hey, you know, we've got this new international business position open. You know, you ought to maybe kind of take a look at it. So. I'd have been to business school. I had a resume. I submitted it, went in and interviewed, and somehow I got the job.
So he just gave you a little bit of a nudge, A.
Little bit, yeah, a little bit of a nudge and quickly fell in love with dental technology and the dental lab community.
New international. What did that mean? You were only stateside before.
No, it was a new position within international. We.
Oh, I see.
Yeah. We'd had a fellow who was actually, well, my grandfather was still at the business, he turned it over to this fellow, Harvey Sollinger, who ran the business. Harvey was CEO for a while.
A non-Steinbach.
A non-Steinbach. And Harvey spoke seven languages.
Jesus.
Overachiever. He was a Jewish textile trader who was overseas when World War II broke out, and he had family in Louisville. immigrated to Louisville after the war and somehow we ended, he and my grandfather became friends. he was in sales for years and years and then ultimately ran the business for a while before my father took over in 85. But At the time, 30% of our business was export.
Really? That's impressive.
Explain that. What do you mean, like to other countries?
Yeah, we and still do export to about 80 different countries worldwide. So huge, huge part of our business, but you know, they kind of tucked me away in international. So no matter how much I wanted to go have a good time, it really, I couldn't muck things up too badly. So, but for a family business, it's a great, great place really to go and learn and do it, do it in a pretty, relatively safe environment where you learn and the company can grow, but you, if anything doesn't go well, then you can't, no real harm done, right?
Yeah.
I could challenge that.
How many brothers does your father have?
So my dad's one of seven, seven kids. Yeah. Seven kids, eight-year, good Catholic family.
Yep. I'm a good Catholic girl too. Yep.
So at the time, he had two brothers and a sister working in the business. Make sure I get that. Yeah. So there were four of them.
Well, that was my question. How many people, how many people work in the business?
At the time, we were, the company was about 200 people. And everything was in Louisville with the exception of IntraTech, which was down in Dallas before it got moved to Louisville. And Ann was in more marketing before, and she eventually became CEO. David was in finance and he did a lot of industry work. He was real active in the DMA trade alliance and then was the first president when the DMA merged with the ADTA. to form the DTA.
Jesus.
Yeah.
DTA and the AMA and the non-AMA.
Abbreviations in this industry.
Yeah, so it was the Dental Manufacturers of America and then, I don't know, the American Dental Trade Association, I think was the other one.
Yeah. Yeah. I think so, yeah.
And we know real well. She's your aunt.
Yeah, so she's the youngest of the seven.
Okay, yeah.
So there's not a lot of spread. I think there's like five, six years between her and my dad. In their generation, it's super tight. And then I'm the first grandchild. So Anne and I are about 15 years, 15 years, 17 years difference.
Oh, wow. Yeah, okay.
And age.
I get you.
Yeah.
So she was in it, your dad was in it, and then your other uncle was in it, and then...
And then one more uncle was in manufacturing and R&D. So it's my uncle Andy, who's... It was a real quiet one.
Wow. So everybody's got a little bit of a little bit of into the company except for the other three. They weren't in it at all.
No, my aunt was married to a fellow who had a bunch of small businesses here in Louisville. And then one of one brother was a radiologist and the other was a urologist.
Sweet.
Yeah. Yeah. So it took- I.
Bet you holiday conversations are real interesting.
Yeah, it was like we never left work.
Yeah, that's how it is. That's how it goes in family business.
But it took to my generation to actually have a dentist in the family. So we- Uh-oh, really.
You have one now.
We have two dentists and we call ourselves G4, generation fours. Yeah, so there's two dentists here, Anne's daughter, Allie, is a general dentist in Virginia. And then my sister Stacy married a prosthodontist.
Oh God, what was she thinking? Just kidding. I'm just kidding. If he listens to this, I really am kidding.
Jimmy might, but yeah, it's, he's got a great practice here in Louisville and does some phenomenal full arch and removable work.
So 1999, you joined. So take us from 1999 to present.
All right, so.
Or 1999 to 2010.
That's right. So yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed doing the international side. I ended up taking over Asia, Latin America, and grew both of those territories, but I was, getting close to getting married, was getting a little burned out of the travel. And unfortunately, I picked September 11th to talk to my dad.
You're kidding me. That's September 11th.
That's September 11th.
God.
Yeah. And, you know, I felt like such a such a fool. We're at lunch watching the towers fall, trying to express, you know, like I'm ready to I'm ready to do something different. And so, yeah, that's yeah. But it took about another two years and I became the first product manager at Witmix and was responsible for the porcelain ovens. So I was the furnace and porcelain brand manager or product manager. And I was also starting to travel to the dental schools with the articulators and doing the servicing contracts that we do.
Yeah, so you were on the road a lot, probably.
I was, but the one thing that kind of stuck at that point was product development. And the first product I brought to market was Flowstone.
I remember Flowstone.
Yeah, yeah. You know, so there was, there were a couple versions over in Europe, but nothing here in the States. And my degree was in marketing, but more market research. And so it was the first time like kind of got to put together a system, did a ton of interviews, understanding what people liked and like, and use that to drive the requirements and then manage the, it was a sort of a team leader for the R&D team that then figured out how to make gypsum flow, but then set quickly. And so, yeah.
So you come up with the product before you come up with the way to make it.
Yeah. Like, hey, I mean, whip mix in a lot of ways has always been more of a fast follower as opposed to like a new to the world innovator. If you look at the, we licensed the original whip mixer, right? We licensed the articulator. we acquired a CF Price company for the model trimmers.
Oh, I see, yeah. Instead of innovating, you're acquiring.
It is, but it's recognizing, to me, the trick is recognizing when something has true value to it and isn't just a me too or an also. So that was really when I kind of got the spark of I can be entrepreneurial within an existing business because I can figure out new products for us to launch. So we did Flowstone, we did, we ended up doing Formula One, we did the mainstay articulator pins, and we were doing lean manufacturing at the same time. And so that really then gave a kind of a bent of, okay, if a lab's gonna go lean, what are the way, what are products that can help it reduce cycle time? How do you get to a one-piece flow as opposed to batch processing? How do you build quality in at the source? And then we did Lean Rock after that. And that's probably, Barbara, why you say you think of us as a stone company, because a lot of that formulation expertise was in that we're in the dental stones. Wow.
So when you talked about lean manufacturing, because I remember we hired you guys, somebody from your company to come in tonight and review our processes and do lean. So were you guys an early adapter to lean?
We were definitely in the dental industry. I mean, lean had been around in manufacturing for a number of years. We hired a new VP of operations back, I'm trying to think of when we hired Jim. But Jim had worked in automotive, and he brought that Lean philosophy to us. So we'd already had, for my dad, a lot of continuous improvement things, tools of that nature. But Lean then provided a focus to what we were doing internally, which allowed us to repurpose a lot of space, convert, find a lot of investment dollars to then go after larger CapEx projects, which then, helped us in manufacturing quite a bit. So we had a really, really nice rhythm going, but then we were like, hey, if it's one thing if we're lean, but really the people buying from us, if we can help them, then it becomes that much more mutually beneficial. And that's when we started the lean symposiums that we hosted for a number of years. And we did Bob Long. Yeah. Bob did a lot of the lean consulting with different facilities.
So mostly 4 labs, though.
Yes. Yeah.
Did the lean improve a lot in Witmix? I mean, did you see a huge benefit?
Oh, 100%. I mean, we were like one of the best examples. Our gypsum mills were 10,000 pound blenders, but if you look at how all the different stones that Whitmix manufactures, you know, you would have 10,000 pounds in the mill, but maybe, you know, you actually only needed 6 or 8,000, but you were gonna go ahead and fill the mill, because why wouldn't you? And then you had Mills sitting there waiting while it went to QC to get approved or modified if it didn't meet the quality specs. I mean, the one thing our family's always hung our hat on is whatever we do produce, it's at a super high quality.
Yeah, a lot of eyes on it.
Right. So Jim found a tumbling technology where you'd fill 2,000 pound, like they're called IBCs, but they're a smaller bulk container and you'd take it over to a mixer and it would sit there and it would spin that IBC and blend it. And so you could then manufacture closer to the actual demand of the powder needed, you know, so you might, you know, think of like resin rock in five different colors. You can blend it to the actual color blend the actual colors that you need and not have all this overproduction and this wait time. So that's just one very small example. But we also did a lot with machine build. And instead of having to build a whole bunch of machines, right, do this large, how do you get it to more of like a one-piece flow so that if, we used a grocery store concept, if you have 5 model trimmers in inventory, 2 get pulled, that triggers a rebuild. And then how do you just make two and have all the parts and pieces on a flexible line that allow you to do it? So there was a lot of process, a lot of process innovation that, you know, prevented stockouts, improved quality. And so we were seeing it and experiencing it ourselves and wanted to wanted to share that.
Yeah, that's cool.
You shared it with us. I remember Bob came in and mapped out the way that the laboratory was running and gave us advice on how to improve time and productivity and basically revamped the way that we were operating as a dental laboratory back then. And it was quite eye-opening and we became, I mean, at least twice as efficient, honestly.
Yeah, it's amazing when you don't realize, well, Like we've been making these small accommodations for space or people, right? And that suddenly leads to this spaghetti chart of how a product moves through a facility or.
Yeah, you go this way 100 feet and then turn around and go that way 100 feet and nothing was like next to each other or, you know, you see these spaghetti maps and you're all over the place.
Yeah, and then there's just carts and. case pans everywhere.
Yep, exactly. And nothing had a rhythm.
Woodmix is a big facility. You cannot afford to have people walking around.
No, it's a quarter million square feet under roof. It's Is it really? It's a huge facility.
Yeah, on about 9 acres. it being big. I didn't know it was that big.
Yeah, there's a lot of little hidden nooks and crannies in that building.
Is it the same building just at additions that was the original?
No, my grandfather bought that building in 69.
Oh wow.
What did it used to be? I've heard this before.
It was a Pillsbury cake factor.
Yeah.
The big blue tower was where all the flour and ingredients were. And that flour silo caught on fire and Pillsbury was a union. It was a union shop. Pillsbury just said, we're done and locked the doors and walked away and let the fire burn. You're kidding me.
That's a great story.
Wow. Yeah. So we were in another location, I don't know, probably 5, 6 miles away when my grandfather found that building and bought it and then had to rebuild it. And then it's been added on to over the years. I think we've done at least two. Two additions.
Wow.
Yeah, we did a big temperature humidity controlled add-on for the casting investment manufacturing. And then another one for, we did a lot of horizontal turning for all the different screws and pieces parts for articulators. So we did another add-on for all of that machining work. Wow.
The scope of size and inventory and catalog is just beyond what I could comprehend. I mean, Whitmix has so much.
And then you get all the, yeah, and then you get all the little pieces parts.
Yeah. Beyond just all the things that make up the things.
Yeah. It was a great place to learn. I mean, I, you know, we did ERP really, really well. We got into, you know, change management. You know, I got a huge introduction to ISO, how to manufacture in an ISO environment. And when I was leading the milling center, we made the change from ISO 2001 to 13485, the medical device manufacturing standard. So, you know, a huge-?
I've never seen more work or paperwork as companies that are ISO 1385. I hated it. We were at that one point, Knight had that designation.
Oh, did you really?
Oh my God, that was a pain in the ***.
Do you not have it anymore? Hell no. Oh.
We have like 5 people managing that. was tough. But yeah, I mean, it was, prestigious to have it. But, dental lab wise, you don't really need.
Sure.
When you're a manufacturer like Whipmix, it's awesome. But for us?
The only reason a lab might want it is like if it's selling into Canada or another country where you need that designation just helps you with your product lines. But as long as you're domestic, you need. A good quality system is really important, but 13 and 485 is really overblown.
Yes.
Well said.
So obviously you're not with Whitmix now. So when did you leave and where did you go?
September 11th.
Well, he mentioned it. I don't think that day is not out.
No, my departure date came in October of 2017. I was in my early mid 40s. We'd started the milling center and then sort of scaled it back. We had brought in a lot of digital technology, but I was going through a divorce and or just come through a divorce and things were just really unsettled.
Sure.
And anyways, I had the opportunity to leave. and do a true startup in the direct to consumer aligner business.
Oh, you got into that game.
I did.
So you were early into that too?
Yeah. So I was a co-founder in Smile Shapers with Reed Nunley.
Yeah.
Wait, come on. What?
Is that your Reed Elvis?
Yeah. I was like, what?
That's crazy.
I didn't realize that. started off as a direct to consumer.
Yeah, I it was really, really funny conversation. I was like, Reed, man, we're selling a whole bunch of three-shaped scanners to these guys down in Nashville. You know, there's something going on down there. And he called me like a month later to go have lunch. And he was like, Stuart, would you ever be interested in doing this? And I was like, you know, yeah, let's keep talking. And so he had been working on the business plan since then, and he and I continued to refine it, but it it checked a lot of boxes for me. I ownership position, growth opportunity, still in Louisville, still in dental.
Yeah.
So it was like, when, if I don't leave now, I'm never going to leave.
Yeah.
And so it was, my dad had more or less retired about six years prior. So it was just, it was a different wit mix than the wit mix that I started with.
Sure.
And it'd been almost 19 years. So it was 18 years and six months. But who's counting?
Family aside, that's a long time.
It was a really long time. And so I was ready to, I was ready to do something different. And so Reed and I started Smile Shapers.
How did you launch something like that? Like, I mean, you came up with a business plan, but like, you know, back and forth. I mean, how did you create that?
Back in the early days of the direct to consumer aligners, I mean, it was a website and then we were working on influencers. We launched in seven states. And it was all paid Google ad word search.
Wow.
Yeah.
Did you ship out impression trays to the public? That method.
Yeah. I mean, that was the early days. Yeah, Nan Boyd and I were back there filling filling putty jars.
That's funny.
So I worked out of the facility there for a while and then we.
It was back when it was upstairs at Derby.
No, initially I was in that manager's room up front opposite of the lobby.
Yeah, okay.
That little manager's room and then sort of that training, well, it then became the print room. But yeah, I was over there. It was just a ton, you know, it was a ton of stuff, but unfortunately, I mean, that, the reason, We got out early because the amount of money you have to spend to get customers. And most of the inquiries we got were for people who really need to see an orthodontist. I mean, it was hard. I had recruited an orthodontist to be chief clinical officer. I had recruited dentists in every state where we were operating, you know, picked up all the med-mal insurance to cover them as a telemedicine model. We built all the infrastructure and then just really ran. ran out of funding because to feed the beast, it was a huge, huge advertising spend. And it just wasn't, it became non-sustainable for us. I was still working as a consultant for Witmix with Carbon. Carbon brought Witmix's surgical guide resin in as the first third-party validated resin.
Oh, really?
Interesting. Yeah, and I was really intrigued by Carbon and I called Brian Gainey and Within 3 weeks, he had me on the payroll.
So were you using carbons at Derby to do the clear direct to consumer clear liners?
Not initially. So we started with the Asiga with one of the early large format. I'm trying to remember the exact, but I think Derby brought the carbon in shortly after I left because small shapers kind of morphed right into that private label lab.
Product. So how did you get hooked up with Carbon?
Well, at Whitmix, I'd been working with them on the bringing the surgical guide resin in. So I helped negotiate.
Oh, that was it. Wow.
Yeah, so I helped negotiate the contract where, you know, I'd already left, but I was still helping the family.
Yeah, sure.
I'd already left. We negotiated, got the contract negotiated, and then we'd added it. As Carbon does, all their thorough validation, print validation, work through with that with them, all the, any third-party lab testing they needed. So I had a pretty good working relationship at that point with Brian and Carbon and made the move. And it's been, it was interesting because that six months of that we were officially on the market at Smile Shapers before we ran out of funding, that was like all the experience. So no one else had ortho experience at Carbon outside of Brian and myself. And so we'd hired.
Oh, so you brought the brains?
Well, we brought Jeff Denny in. I was hired to be, to handle special accounts. And I think Jeff was going to do ortho. And then they were like, wait a minute, Jeff, you don't really do any ortho, because Jeff, but Jeff had come from iTero, but he had been doing restorative, all the restorative stuff at iTero. So anyways, Jeff took special markets or special customers and I, and I got the ortho division. And so I started selling the M2 for for aligners and ortho models.
And I imagine that was huge because those things are still being used in ortho A lot.
Yeah, the ortho world is completely different than restorative in a lot of ways, right? Like after carbon, I ended up running an ortho lab out of Buffalo, New York, and we were 98, 99% all digital inbound.
Yeah, I've heard this about.
We maybe poured 5 or 6 models a week. and we were processing over 1100 cases a week. Yeah.
So I mean, that's pretty spectacular.
Yeah. And so I was printing over 400 models a day there and about 100 metal parts. So, a lot of, a lot of 3D printing, a lot of, a lot of digital, but the actual fabrication, We're in the restorative world, right, has moved to mills for the most part and full contour. Everything we'd made was still hand fabricated. So it's, you know, all the appliances are still, you know, someone has to salt and pepper all the acrylic to make the holly. Or someone's working on a BioStar doing the thermoforming. Or someone's wire bending to do to do the RPE. So, but it was a great time because just like Smile Direct Club, I mean, there was a huge arms race in ortho and Carbon gave me the L1 to sell for high volume thermoforming. And it was an arms race. So I was selling all across the globe. In any given day, I would have a call with Singapore or, I'm still in Kentucky, I'd be in California or wherever, Round Rock, Texas, wherever the volume was, wherever people were trying to take that volume from a line. It was a great time. It was a lot of hard work. There was a lot of printing capacity at the corporate level. and at the lab level?
So those L1s, that's the biggest printer Carbon has? Yeah. Was that still the same subscription base model that they have for all of them? So nobody really owned them, I guess is the phrase.
Correct. Yeah.
That had to have been expensive.
It was. I mean, my best year, I wrote $17 million in contract value in just those printers. Yeah, there were a handful of M2s sprinkled in there, but we did about 17 million in my best year.
Yeah.
But that's contract value. So that's across all the years of the printer subscription.
I imagine most of the big labs that were in it had it.
They either had an M2. We did a pretty good job on the ortho side. I mean, there were a lot of other Structo Broadways. I mean, there were a lot, there were a lot of other high volume printers that were out there, but I, we carbon did a nice job at establishing ourselves as one of the market.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
And so how long are you still with them or how long did you do that for?
No, I did carbon for about two years and then I got recruited to another 3D printing startup in San Francisco. and left for a little, I needed to get off the treadmill for a little bit and catch my breath. It was, it was a startup life is a dead sprint. And so I went to a smaller, earlier stage startup. There were only like 40 of us, I think there.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah, versus I was employed 275 and I forget, they were well over 500 when I left Carbon.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, it was intense growth. Really intense growth.
So someone enticed you over with a new printer?
They did. They did. There were a lot of things I liked about it. had a lot of the things, a lot of things about the print quality that the carbon had. But what was interesting was they, when we had an end, we had $35 a liter model resin, which was really disruptive.
Yeah, I'll say. Did you say $35 for a liter?
Yeah. Yeah.
That's like nothing.
That is like, wow.
Yeah, my cost models looked really, really good when I ran them.
I bet they did.
Unfortunately, that was also right at 8 weeks before COVID hit. And San Francisco got shut down. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, every lab was furloughing team members. I mean, it was, it was horrible. And so I was like, all right, well, if they're going to lay my *** off, they're going to lay my *** off while I'm doing something. And so we had three projects internally. We had like the couplers for the oxygen mask, you know, that would go around your head. So there's the oxygen generator. So we were, we had a project for the couplers for that. We had the face shields. And then the one I took.
I remember the face shields.
I took the nasal swabs.
Oh yeah, those were huge.
That was brilliant, by the way. That was really smart.
Well, there was a, it was actually out of Harvard. There was an open source project to find 3D printed nasal swabs and they did an open. sort of an open call. And so it was Formlabs, Envision Tech, Carbon, us, that company is called Origin. I'm trying to think if there were, maybe HP was the 5th one. And it was really funny to watch our, I mean, our co-founders use some really incredible software, came up with some really unique designs. And our design in a true clinical trial, we beat all the other 3D printing companies.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
When you say you beat them, like, how?
Because you contain their nasal swab standard.
Yeah, our clinical efficacy for being able to take in a sample and then be detected and not have false positives or false negatives. Yeah, we had the most effective swab at capturing a sample that would then be read correctly through the PCR.
All right, that makes sense. I was thinking. you guys did more faster or they were smaller or there was something special about them?
Well, one of the unique things about that company was instead of sort of self-developing formulations, resin formulations, we partnered and we were kind of the printer of choice for most of the industrial resin developers. And so we had relationships with Molecule that became Hinkle and a couple other companies, but The resin we used came from Hinkle, and I was able to work directly with the people that developed it. And really, the secret came down to post-processing. Everyone else who was using sort of a similar product were using sort of dental-specific cure units, and we were using industrial cure units that worked better. And so we had a much more flexible product. And it was a higher rate of throughput. So it was a better product that we can manufacture faster. And so suddenly I had a business. I had this 10 week sprint of standing up a business, implementing a quality system. We ended up doing ethylene oxide EO sterilization because the resins weren't, and the packaging weren't holding up to autoclave. And then right about that time, all the other non-3D printed options flooded the market. but it was sort of this crazy three month period where anything you can make, you could sell.
Yeah. People were desperate for it.
Yeah, it was a horrible time. So when everyone else had their staycation, I was working 10, 12 hour days. Yeah. And then coming out of that, we were acquired by Stratasys, which was a really cool. turned into a really cool, operation. And because I've never, I've always been more on the product side and product innovation than sales, I ended up becoming the first product manager for the Origin 1 printer and reporting to Israel instead of in sales and reporting into the Minneapolis facility.
Wow. So you were with Stratus for a while.
Yeah. So I did about a year there. He had sort of done a soft launch in dental of the Origin One. I found another product manager to backfill me. And we were also getting ready to launch the PolyJet dentures at the same time. So I got to go to Israel, which was a lifelong bucket list trip for me. Spend a full day in Jerusalem going through the old town. And then we were developing the marketing plans for the PolyJet TrueDent. Yeah. And then a dental lab, one of my customers called me out of Buffalo, and then I ended up there for a couple of years.
At where?
ODL out of Buffalo, New York.
Oh, yeah.
So then I got first-hand real-life experience running a dental lab. I'll be at an ortho lab, but... It was a fun and crazy couple of years.
So did you go back and forth or were you remote?
I did.
Yeah, that's tough. So you just move around A lot. You're there for a week and then home or what?
Pretty much, yeah. I could catch like a 7 A.m. flight and be in Buffalo by lunchtime before lunch on Monday and Thursday maybe around 2, 132, I could catch a flight and be back home by midnight and then be be home Friday.
Yeah. For some people, that's ideal. four days in, three days off.
How'd you like running a lab?
I love running the lab, Elvis. It was.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me because you're kind of like outside the lab space, you know, as like a vendor manufacturer kind of thing. And now you're thrown in a lab.
Yeah.
I mean, all our ******** you've heard for decades.
Yeah.
It was.
Look, and it was.
Labs are, you know, they're very crazy, I think.
Oh, 100%. I had 70 wonderful nut jobs.
Yeah.
We had a good period of growth. We were hitting our head in that we hadn't developed quite enough talent at the bench level to, we could sell more than we could produce. And that's a really frustrating place to be. I mean, it beats the alternative, right? But it's a really frustrating place to be. And so we, started doing a lot more work with cross-training. We were doing a fair amount with wire bending and putting together curriculum, because wire benders were really a lot of what, at the hand fabrication level, we were struggling with. We had implemented a fair amount of automation on the thermoforming line. You know, we were doing over, almost 300 pieces of plastic a day on thermoforming. But the palatal expanders were a good, a really high percentage of our volume. And over half of those were digital bands. So it was a really, I mean, it was a great digital environment to work in. We did a lot on the front end. I got to work. I did a lot with CADFlow early on, kind of what our needs were. And they were incredible working with us on making changes and accommodations. And so, when I left, we were getting really close to being able to metal print the full RPE. So, imagine, I mean, it was pretty crazy 'cause a digital impression would come in, we would digitally design... or CAD Flow would do a lot of the design work, starting to do more of the design work for us. Design it, print models would go one place to be printed, and then the metal would go to another area to be metal printed, and then they would come back together and we'd solder the expansion screw in place, and then QC and out the door. I mean, it, you know, there was a lot of, it was a lot of digital integration in that job. A lot of lean about how do we get to one piece flow? How do we not let case pans sit? So it was not a place you could be bored at because we were having to constantly, constantly evolve so that our processes were efficient enough and our people were good enough that we could hit a, we could stay on track for our growth goals.
And at what point did that drive you crazy?
What time did I wake up every morning? No, it was great. I mean, we're a bunch of quirky people. I mean, and so it was a great, it was, I worked with some phenomenal people, some great technicians. But ortho also for me can be, it got to the point where it can be a little boring because you're moving teeth You're retaining teeth, right? Like, you just kind of do one or two things. There's a lot of ways to do it, but at the end of the day, you're doing one or two things.
Kind of takes the creativity out of it, It does.
So then you get creative on, like, I think we made 37 different appliances to do those two things.
Wow.
37.
Yeah. I mean, the product variety is crazy. Wow. I never imagined.
I thought clear lines did it all.
Yeah, no, I mean, it's way more than just a holly, a thermoformed retainer, and a... in an RP with some smaller bands. It's, there's a lot. It takes some super talented people to be able to do it and do a lot at scale and do it, do it a lot.
Oh, 100%. Yeah. So how long were you there for?
Almost 2 years.
Okay.
Almost 2 years. And then?
So you're with Witmix again now, right?
No, I'm with Digital Dental. Oh, sorry.
I'm just messing with you.
My sister's with Witmix, but no.
Oh, that's crazy. You're with Digital Dental.
I am.
Was that your first stop after the ortho place?
Yeah, it was one of those.
Okay.
You know, they needed leadership and I was looking for my next challenge. And so it started as just, hey, will you come out and take a look at what we've got and tell us what you think? And 2, almost two years later, I'm still here.
So are you going back and forth again? Do you, or do you, is it, do you stay home, do you have to travel?
I guess that's my question. I had that bad car accident in February.
So I was going to ask you about that, but I was going to wait a little longer.
That's right. So last week was actually my first trip back to the facilities in Scottsdale in California since January.
Wow.
But no, it's still a lot of hotel stays.
So digital dental, what to talk about that for our fans?
Well, for the history of digital dental and the podcast, I mean, I think we've had them on three times. And back when we started, they were huge supporters of us, getting ads and stuff, wink, wink. But I always knew him as Crystal Ultra and unbelievable American-made mills that were just beefy as could be. That's how I know them.
Yep, same.
So in the mill side is the same.
Yep.
In fact, I got to spend a lot of time with Kim Karpowitz, the founder.
Yep, You know, we've got like 10 of those here, right?
I do, I do. And I, yeah, Brent, Brent keeps me busy, Stu. I need a little help. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. So Kim and Cameron, father-son combo out of California, were designing custom CNC machines for multiple industries before, actually they were, I hadn't heard this origin story. The guys at Three Shape didn't even have a lab scanner yet, but they'd started the software. And Kim had built a couple of machines to mill wax for the jewelry industry for custom rings. And that became the Dent Mill One. And then Somewhere in there, and I think around, I know I met Kim the first time around 07, 08. We used to have that great deal OAC meeting in California. That was the original CAD CAM show back in the day. Somewhere right in there, he met this husband, wife team that had a dental lab in Scottsdale. And so it was Scott Adkins would say, Kevin, if you had a mill that would do this, I've got this material that's really, really killer. And that's how Crystal Ultra came to be.
Interesting.
Yeah. So Scott and Anna had their lab. They ran a supply business. And Kim and Cameron kept making the machines out in California and coming up with all the different milling strategies. And actually, I worked with Digital Dental on their aligner trimming solution when I was at Carbon. And so we co-sold their mills with our our print solutions. And believe it or not, Derby and Smile Shapers was the first customer for that machine.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Small world.
It really is. We still design and build all of our own machines out of California. We still have the small, it's much smaller now, lab that does some, that sort of focuses on the full arch crystal ultra side and the supply business. I think the only thing we've added though, really to all of that is, is we also are partnered with Preet for their milled abutments.
Yep.
So we have a partnership with both BioDenta and Preet, but Preet today is the dominant blank that we sell with our Titan mill.
So what did you have to work with FDA and Preet in order to get all that kind of worked out so labs could buy this mill and their blanks and be approved? Compliant.
Yeah, yeah. Luckily, Preet as the manufacturer takes on the bulk of that responsibility. But we do a lot of validation work with them, of the milling templates, and they use some of our mills for their own facility. They mill for labs, and then we started our own milling facility. So we mill for labs as well now. Yeah, it's been a, and I've known Ruben and Chris for as long as I've known you, Barb, I think.
Oh yeah, I was going to say, they've been around a while.
Yeah. So it's become a wonderful partnership.
I saw Ruben at the Heartland convention Friday and Saturday of last week. Yep. Working our ***** off.
Yeah.
So what are you doing at Digital Dental now? I mean, you're the president.
Yeah, so I'm more or less the president run day-to-day.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's really kind of the same thing I have been doing, right? How do we bring process improvements to, we're not stocked out of the things that our labs need? How do we do things better? And then, the other thing that I'm starting to, we're starting to get more into now, a year and a half into it, is the product development and innovation side. So, we have a new mill that's early, early in development that I'm pretty stoked about that we can talk about. in a future podcast.
But we've got- Nope, nope, gotta give it up. Give us the dirt. What is it gonna do?
But we've got a couple other milling products that we're getting pretty close to and doing, starting to do some beta users on. So just. by LMT, we're gonna have a, we're gonna have some new stuff on our table, which is a really.
Well, that's the perfect time to launch new stuff, LMT.
The first year really was about how do we, you know, we needed to improve our overall financial health. And we did that without any reduction in force, which I'm really proud of. And so we had some natural attrition, but no reduction in force. And we've, we have things in a really nice, healthy place again. And so now this year has been focusing on growth. And so the only sort of thing I'll say I carried over and learned at ODL was the EOS entrepreneurial system. And so have brought a fair amount of that into how we operate at digital dental. And that was part of what I talked about at Labfest when I saw you last told us.
Yeah.
So that's, but that's, it's kind of just, you just sort of keep layering the different tools and things that you learn at each stop, and you just get better with old age, like a fine bourbon.
Yes. And on a personal note, both Elvis and I watched you on Facebook after that happened with your wife and your daughter and your family. And how is Jamie doing?
Jamie's doing great. She has entered what she has affectionately called her Victorian era.
Yeah.
It started with crocheting, and then she added embroidery, and then she added sourdough. Wow. So I'm trying to think if there's anything else. But funny enough, I really appreciate you asking, tomorrow is her first day going back to be in the classroom.
Oh, good for her. Wow.
Yeah.
That was a long road, man. I mean, you guys really, really went through it. You, yourself, all three of you. So God bless you for getting through that. And I saw a picture of you two at Nola. And she had sneakers on and I remember her fondly because she was a runner. And so, hopefully, physically, just every day gets better, hopefully.
It does, it does. And so I'm not sure how much running is in her future, but she, it's been a long runners.
Will find a way, dude. We will find a way.
Yeah, you are her, you're a runner too. I forgot Elvis. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy because it's been a little over 10 months and the doctors say really, I mean, it'll be a good year and a half, two years before you're really fully recovered, but geez. Damn. And 10 months, I mean, the amount of growth and what she's gone through to be able to get back to the classroom is just amazing. So.
Yeah.
So yeah, no, thank you.
Congratulations to her sincerely.
And it also says a lot to what, Digital Dental for allowing you that time to recover and take care of.
Oh my lord, they could not have been better to me throughout all of this. Yeah.
Says a lot about a company.
Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people that stepped up when I was, we were in, I mean, we were stuck in Charleston for almost 8 weeks, living out of a hotel with three of us going, having surgery and surgeries and doctor's appointments and back and forth. And before we were able to all get back to Louisville. So no, the ownership of Digital Dental and my team members all did me a huge solid. And yeah, we've come out much better on the back. Yeah, thank you.
Way to end on that note. I'm really, really happy for you guys that she gets to go back to school. That's wonderful.
Which means I have an empty house during the day again.
Yeah.
I get it, dude. Yeah.
I love my wife, but I can't wait to see her for breakfast and dinner only.
Yeah. So I imagine you in Digital Dental, I mean, we're going to see you at Visions and Lab Day and all the things in 26.
Yep, and we have our normal spotted LMT at the bottom of the escalators.
Awesome.
Yeah. So we'll be there. That new mill will be out. Some, yep, some new things to show everybody.
That's awesome.
Fantastic. Well, thank you.
Yeah, Stuart, thank you so much, man. I know we started, we didn't touch upon this, but I mean, we did that triathlon together and you got out of swimming. Because that seems to be what everybody does. yeah, I appreciate the friendship we've had over the years.
Oh, thank you guys.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Yep. Yeah, Barb and I even raced a non-dental triathlon together.
Yeah, it was on the East Coast.
Yeah, at Cape Canaveral, the Rocket Man.
Yep, that was awesome. Enjoyed the heck out?
You all like did it outside the foundation? Is that not allowed?
Yes, we did. And we came in, we placed something first, I think.
We had one of the top, yeah. If we went first, we were second in the relay.
Nobody's going to check, so say whatever you want.
Exactly. That's why I said first.
Well, all I know is we beat, I think we beat Nick Azzara, who did the whole thing by himself, so.
Yeah. Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Good times. Good times.
That's awesome.
All right. It was a fun weekend.
Yeah, thank you so much, man. And I guess we'll see you in a couple of weeks of Visions.
We'll see you in Vegas, baby.
Yes, sir. All right, thank you so much, sir. Have a good one.
All right, thanks all.
A huge thanks to Stuart for coming on our podcast, finally, and telling us your story. It was so great to hear about your family's history with a whip mixer to the growth that you were part of. And even though it's tough to work with family, and I should know, I'm sure it's equally tough to leave the family business to follow your own success. Now that you are at Digital Dental, we know that the already great company will become even greater. We look forward to seeing the new mill in Chicago. Thanks, Stuart.
All right, everybody. That's all we got for you. And of course, we'll talk to you next week.
Have a good one.
Bye. Hold on, I said 405, but I typed in 406. 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.