Voices from the Bench invites you to follow us on Instagram

Laura Prosser: Hi, Voices of the Bench community. I'm Laura Prosser, the digital marketing manager here for iaclar North America, and I would like to invite you to start following us on Instagram. It's your chance to obtain exclusive updates on product announcements, industry news, upcoming educational events, and heartwarming stories about our local team and industry professionals. So let's get social together. Simply start following us on Instagram. Iaclar Na. That's Instagram. Iaclar Na. Let'see you there.

Elvis: Welcome to Voices from the Bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an email@info voicesfrohebench.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.


Elvis: I leave for Chicago tomorrow, so. And I'm sad I'm gonna miss Chicago. I'm so sorry, Barb

Greetings and welcome to episode 361, Voices from the Bench. My name is Elvis.

Barbara: And my name's Barbara. And I'm sad I'm gonna miss Chicago. Even though we're loasing this after Chicago.

Elvis: I think it's obvious. Maybe it's not, but we always record these things before the weekend event, so. See, I leave for Chicago tomorrow, so.

Barbara: Today'S Tuesday, so you leave Wednesday. Okay. Gotcha.

Elvis: Yep. And yeah, you are gonna be missed, Barb.

Barbara: All that work all by yourself. I'm so sorry, but I know you're gonna be amazing and have a lot of gas and have a lot of content, but I'm gonna miss you.

Elvis: I say this now that it was okay, but let's report after.


So we really don't have anything to report, but I can say this

Barbara: All right, let's do it.

Elvis: Yeah. So we really don't have anything to report, but I can say this and with confidence. It was cold and we missed you.

Barbara: Well, thank you. Today's actually my dad's birthday. Today's the 18th of.

Elvis: Are you, ah, effing serious?

Barbara: Yes. So, it's just been. My brother's in town, everybody's starting to roll into town and you know, we're just going to make the best of it. So I'm happy to see all my family, but absolutely. I wish it was under different circumstances, but thank you all for your. For your thoughts. So have a good time.

Elvis: Yeah. What is that? Fear of missing out the fomo?

Barbara: Yep, I'll just stay updated through, Facebook and Instagram and everything that we.

Elvis: Will definitely make sure you're aware of the happenings.

Barbara: Thank you.


Next up, podcast will be at Exocad booth in Cologne, Germany

So next up, in just over a month, you and I will be at the Exocad booth at the id. Something that we wanted forever and ever in Cologne, Germany.

Barbara: Like I said once, a dream of ours on this podcast and the amazing people at Exocad made it a reality. Thank you guys. So very much so. We will be set up for five days in hall number one booth A040CO40 boy, if there's that many slashes weren't.

Elvis: Trouble just be glad it's not a dash.

Barbara: Yeah, no, as long as I can say it correctly, we're good. Please come see us. Guys, get on the podcast. We want to talk to all kinds of people from all over the world and we know this show brings them in. So come say hi. Get on the podcast.

Elvis: Yeah, I can't imagine all the countries that go to this show with it being so big. I mean, when we were in Spain it was pretty cool because we got to talk to so many people from so many different countries. But this isnna be nuts.

Barbara: Yes, I know. Pinot wait.

Elvis: Let's make it a goal to talk to everybody from every country. I think we can make it.

Barbara: And everybody wear your shirts.

Elvis: M


Barbara speaks with Vladimir Roman about his company Roman and surgical guides

So this week we talked to a guy that's built a lab that does about 90% of his business and surgical guides. Now, unfortunately, Barb, even though we're talking about you not going to Chicago, you are actually not available for this conversation, which was sad.

Barbara: Butus you know how much I love implants and surgical.

Elvis: I was gonna say something about that, but I wasn't sure. I had a wonderful nerdy time.

Barbara: Yep.

Elvis: But I got to have a delightful conversation with Vladimir Roman about his journey and his surgical guides. Vladimir learned his craft in the Air Force. Not only that, but he learned all aspects of dental technology in about six months. They really push it through there.

Barbara: Yeah, I'll say.

Elvis: After touring around, he went back to be an instructor at Wright Patersson Air Force Base, where it was there that he found a form labs printer. Just kind of sitting there. Getting pushed by a few oral surgeons, Vladimir started to learn how to plan and print surgical guides. Now, after retiring from the air Force, he eventually moves to Florida where he started doing more and more guides. And it wasn't long before he had a bunch of printers and employees.

Barbara: Nice.

Elvis: Now his company Roman as did about 16, 600 surgical guides last year alone. Yeah, that's nuts. That's a lot M It's a great story of growth and success mixed with a whole lot of nerdy implant talk.

Barbara: Oh no.

Elvis: So join us as we chat with Vladimir Roman.


Are you a dental lab in need of more talent

Mark: Are you a dental lab in need of more talent to improve your bottom line and keep production on schedule? Are you a dental tech with great skills but feel you're being limited at your current lab? Well, the answer is here. Hi, I'm Mark from Win Wingo and this is precisely why Win Wingo was created. The dental lab and dental tech community needed a place where labs and technicians can meet, talk about their needs and connect in ways that foster a Win Win outcome as a tech. If you're ready to make a change, thinking about moving in the next year or just cur curious what's out there, sign up today. It's totally free. As a lab, you might be feeling the frustration of paying the big employment site so much and getting so few tech candidates. We understand they don't much care about our industry. WinWnGo.com is simply the best place for lab techs and lab owners to actively engage in creating their ideal future. WinWNGGO.com, how dental techs find paradise.

Elvis: This February, there are a lot of vendors to visit at Lab Day Chicago. And one you don't want to miss is Aite at booth E26. They will be showcasing their exciting new products and cutting edge solutions in digital dentistry. Attendees can explore hands on demonstrations of Biomix stain and glaze techniques, something many guests have mentioned on here before. Along with some of their other innovative technologies, Aite will also host engaging lectures and grand suite two, that's in the east tower, covering topics such as Ezir 3D, Prour digital dentures and their Aite cloud design service. And even before you go, you can stay updated by following AITE North America on social media platforms. And don't miss this opportunity to see how AITE is shaping the future of dental labs. Tell them you heard them on Voices from the Bench and we appreciate your support of the podcast.


Adite. It was actually one of my biggest fears starting the podcast

Adite. Voices from the Bench, the interview. It was actually one of my biggest fears starting the podcast. Then I just started to embrace it. It's not me, it's their names.

Vladimir: It is, it's my name. You know, I had a school teacher in like eighth grade or something, he's like, he couldn't, he tore it up and he's like, is Voldemort here? And I'm like, ah, Voldemort. That's the worst one.

Elvis: Yeah.


Elvis welcomes lab owner Vladimir Roman to the podcast

Super excited today to talk to a lab owner out of Florida. And unfortunately our co host, the lab person out of Florida, couldn't be with us, but we're welcoming Vladimir Roman to the podcast. How are you, sir?

Vladimir: Good, good. You know, I'm very excited and very honored to be here on this podcast, Elvis. Like I said, I, listen to you guys very, very often and Spotify just Makes it so easy to pull up your podcast. I'm very honored to be here.

Elvis: Yeah, we were talking about that before we started. It just rolls right into the next episode. I love it.

Vladimir: Yep, yep. The technology is awesome.

Elvis: You know, Valadimir. Am I saying it right?

Vladimir: Vladimir? it's okay. You can call me whatever. I know you're talking to me.

Elvis: Yeah.


Kenny Miller went into the Air Force because he wanted to fly planes

Okay. Well, sir, tell us, I mean, how did you get into the industry? What started you in dental?

Vladimir: That's an awesome, awesome story. I'd love to share it, because, you know, I had no idea dental lab existed. So graduating high school, you know, I had to do something with my life. And my cousin, who at the time was in the marines, he's like, hey, you should go into military. Go into Air Force. They'll take care of you. He's like, just, whatever you do, don't go the army and the Marines, because the quality of life is different. So, you know, I took that to heart, and then I went into the Air Force, and I came in basically, with something called Open General and Open General.

Elvis: Let me stop you for a second. When people tell me that they're going to go into the Air Force, I mean, you're going in there because you want to fly planes, right?

Vladimir: Well, you know, I, like, had a struggle with education in high school, so I was just trying to get anything. And I get you. Yeah, yeah. I. That. That was a dream and a goal later on in my career, but, yeah, I wanted to do something with airplanes. Exactly.

Elvis: Okay. I just want to make sure. I mean, that's what I think of as a civilian, what the Air Force, you know, is.

Vladimir: Yeah, I had the same mindset. Like, I was gonna work on airplanes, I was gonna do something with aviation, but complet to find out, you know. Ah, everything changed when. Yeah, yeah, it was completely, like, different. I didn't know they had their own medical. And so I was like, oh, cool, I'll put some of these medical jobs on there. And at the very bottom, I saw, like, denal lab, and I was like, oh, I'll put that as my number five choice, because they give you five choices.

Elvis: And it was your fifth one.

Vladimir: It was my fifth one. It just sounded kind of cool in the description, but I had never heard of it. I didn't even know it existed. This was circa 2003.

Elvis: Was dental one through four at all?

Vladimir: So they had dental assisting, and, you know, so I came in on the enlisted side. So the enlisted side, you basically have two jobs for dental, Dental assisting, and Dental lab. And then, that's pretty much it. And I was looking at the two because, you know, to be a dentist, you kind of come in with your. You already accepted a dental school or you graduated dental school.

Elvis: Got it, Got it. Yeah.

Vladimir: Yeah. So. So when I came in, to the air force, I just said, hey, I just want to go. Put me wherever you can put me. And then, then in boot camp, they give you the list of five choices. And at that point I was like, okay, dental lab. That sounds good. that's what I got. Like halfway through boot camp and then I went to go training. At the time it was a sheparerd Air force base up north of Texas, right at the BO of Oklahoma. Texas, like the panhandle area.

Elvis: That's where you did your dental training or just boot camp?

Vladimir: Yep. The boot camp was in San Antonio. So at the time it was seven weeks. And then after seven weeks, I went up to, ah, sheparerd Air Force base to do the technical training. You know, it's a COD AIR accredited program even to this day. And it was, six months long. And then on top of that, you have on the job training that goes on for like, probably about two years.

Elvis: Wow.

Vladimir: Yeah, so it's very, very extensive, robust training system they have.

Elvis: So I've heard this name. I don't know who I heard, but was Pat Coon one of your teachers?

Vladimir: So I knew about Pat Coon when I went to tech school. He was kind of like the generation of instructors before the ones I hadk. So he, he trained all of the instructors that I was under. Gary Osborne, you know, Mr. Kenny Miller, Mr. Gary Johnson. So all these different instructors were always talking about Mr. Pat Coon. And so he was like a legend, you know, when I. Yeah, okay.

Elvis: N. Nice.


If anybody's thinking about getting into the dental lab field, I would recommend military

So when you start, do they just teach you everything? Do you have to, apply to get into like fixed or removable? How's that whole process work?

Vladimir: Yeah, so it's a really interesting process. And if anybody's thinking about getting into the dental lab field, man, I would hands down recommend them to look at the military as a viable option. A, they're going to pay you while you're going to school. You know, it's not much, but you're getting paid. And then B, all the instructors are cdt, so they're all certified. You know, they all have vast amounts of experience. And then when you go to training, so you start out with, I think now it's six blocks of training. And each Block is like, you know, a few months or a few weeks long, depending. But you start out with stone, stone models. You know, you do the impressions, then you go on to dentures, RPDs, and then you move on to the fix. So each section is kind of a block. And that's just like at the basic dental lab school, it's about six months long. And then by the time you get through it, you're doing everything from dentures to RPDs. You know, you're doing some implant, screw retained, you're doing a lot of CAD nowadays, a lot of 3D printing. And then you're going into, the. You finish up with porcelain work, you know, stacking and that kind. That kind of takes the hardest, and the longest time to master. So they finish you up with that. but they give you a really good overview about the dental lab field in basic dent a lab school. And then from there you go on to your first duty station. And then on the job training happens. And that's where you take like the basic knowledge you gained, you apply it, and then you really specialize. You know, your supervisors kind of do more training on actual patients instead of training cases. And then from there, you know, every technician finds their niche. And, you know, I happen to like, fixed something about wax, you know, waxing up a crown. I just, I found it really enjoyable. You know, you put your headphones in, you like wax up a bunch of units. You look up, it's lunchtime, you know, you got to lunch, come back, do it all up. It was really fun. So I love fixed work. when I was stationed in San Antonio, which was my base after Shephpard Air Force Base. And then from there, you know, some, some technicians will go into the RPDs and the dentures, others will go into the fixed, and then, you know, some others go into the ortho, because we had ortho in there as well. So they have like, specialties. In San Antonio, Texas, where my first duty station was, it's kind of like the mecca of dental in San Antonio. Everybody has to go through there at one point in their career.

Elvis: So all technicians that go through the service go through that base.

Vladimir: Yeah, so the schoolhouse moved from Shephpard, and it's a tri service school. So we trained with the army, we trained with the navy, and then the air force, of course, was hosting it at the time. They moved this school down to San Antonio, Texas, which is much better because, Shephpard Air Force Base you know, it's a beautiful area, but there's just not much to do out there. When you're a young, young, person in your, you know, late teens, early 20s, you kind of want to go out and enjoy the life. So San Antonio, when they moved that it was a great move because, it kind of just made the school environment a little bit more enjoyable. So you go, you go to San Antonio for about six months and then from there, you know, you would move on to your first duty station. And of most of the airmen and soldiers and marines, they kind of got their like, larger dental labs that they go to train. So for the Air Force, the larger base for lab training is San Antonio, Texas, right down the road where actually you go to boot camp. So it's kind of like a rude awakening. You leave boot camp, you go to train down the road, and then you come back to boot camp. Bas. You kind of got a little bit of like, PTSD going on, you know, when you go back to that bootc camp environment. But it's good, it's good.


Dental lab technicians on battleships are pretty impressive. I mean, working in those things is impressive

Elvis: Are there options to go to like, more exotic places with this experience? I mean, can you be a dental technician in Hawaii or something?

Vladimir: That, that's an awesome question because after you graduate thental lab school, you know, more often than not you're going to go to a training base. but sometimes you do get to go to like, you know, overseas assignments. They have a big lab in ramsteein, Germany for Air Force. They have a big lab in Kadena, Japan, which is kind of like their Hawaii.

Elvis: Cool.

Vladimir: Yeah, they have, you know, and every air force base has a dental lab. So at least one dento lab tech is going to be in the Air Force base. We have assignments in Hawaii. They have assignments in, England. You know, I got stationed in Japan after, San Antonio. So my was. Yeah, that was my first operational base was in Japan. It was the northern part of Japan. So it was like, you know, a little bit isolated, but the culture, the lifestyle, everything was amazing up there.

Elvis: You know, I mean just to experience it, it's just got to be amazing.

Vladimir: It is, it is.

Elvis: I've heard that on. Maybe you don't know, but you seem to be very knowledgeable about it. But dental lab technicians on battleships, Is that a thing?

Vladimir: That is a thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Elvis: That's what I saw.

Vladimir: Yep. I work with ah, a lot of Navy. They call them dental corpsman, Navy, corpsman. And then, they actually have to go through their training is a little unique so they have to go be basically a medical technician. And then after they get done with being a medical technician, then they shred out to go be a dental assistant. And then after they get done being a dental assistant, they apply to go to dental lab. And then they go to dental lab school. So they have to go through three different schools. Navy does. Before you even become a lab tech, the Air Force just goes straight to lab.

Elvis: So they do almost three duties on a battleship.

Vladimir: No, they. They don't have to go to, like, the operational Navy, but they do have to graduate, like the school, the training. And so. So they go to that school in San Antonio, like all medical training for the militaries in San Antonio, Texas, pretty much. So they go through the Navy does they go through, like, nursing school for basic technicians. Then they go through dental assisting school. And then they go, finally they get into lab school. So they have to, like, you know, really go through the whole, gambit in order to get to the lab. So I get, hats off to the Navy guys because not only they have to be in a ship for, like, you know, months on out doing lab work, they also have to go through all that training.

Elvis: So that's impressive. And I'm sure it's pretty small quarters. I mean, working in those things.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah. A good friend of mine, Cliff Robertson, he was in the Navy for 16 years. And, yeah, he was on the ship. And, you know, they had to keep everything so clean and so tidy because they're living in such quarters. that was, like, the cleanest lab he's ever been to was on a ship.

Elvis: You know, ones that nobody will ever see.

Vladimir: He used to run the course because I was an instructor with him when I came back to teach after I was out. Oh, no, King. Yeah, I went back to lab school halfway through my career. They kind of. They kind of handpick you, and they're like, okay, hey, you're doing good. You're gonna go be a teacher. So I went back to lab school, and he was my lead instructor, Cliff Robertson. And man, it was never clean enough in the lab, you know, so he likes that ship clean environment. Most Navy labpt techs do.

Elvis: What'd you go back and teach?

Vladimir: So I was specializing in the crown and bridge section. So I was doing. Because that, you know, wax up, that was my thing. So we, we taught the basic students how to wax up. Single units, multiple units. We had casting with the broken arm system at the time.

Elvis: Oh, wow.

Vladimir: And then we got them into a little bit of an induction casting using the bagel Nautilus, you know, induction casting machines. And then after that I moved on to porcelain work because my second passion was kind of porcelain. So I went on to teach the porcelain block. And then lastly like the last tour I was there, I kind of moved on to more like the leadership role. So I was kind of training the instructors, tracking their hours and that kind of stuff. And then I worked in the advanced section and the advanced school. You kind of go back, you know. So after you've been out in the air force or army and the Navy for a while, you kind of come back for advanced training because it never ends, right?

Vladimir: Of course when you come back you do like more complex cases. You work on implants, you do complex orthodontic, appliances and then you know, implant supported dentures. So you come back for training. And I was running that block for a little while before I left.

Elvis: Interesting. So you mentioned earlier that they're printing and designing, so your whole time you're there, you still love hand waxing, but yet there was like three shape of exocad sitting right there.

Vladimir: Yeah, that. So it's funny because the air Force was typically like behind the industry, you know, when, when I joined the air force, we got our first CAD CAM machine back from like 04. and so it was a little later than it's been out. You know, it was like the old Ceric compact mailbox. It was tiny but man, this thing was like amazing to us. Right. And so when I got to the schoolhouse, everything was still being analog and there was very little digital, involvement in it. Digital is kind of my forte too because I got my degree in computer science and I just, I'm a computer nerd, you know.

Elvis: When did you get your degree? In the middle of all this before.

Vladimir: It was like, yeah, so you chip at it, you know, you work at it.


You worked in the Air Force for 13 years, getting your degree

And it was about 13 years while I was in, I think I actually got my actual official degree while I was an instructor. I was like, I was thinking to myself, you know, if I'm go going toa train these guys, I got toa have like a little bit of formal background. So I got my degree in computer science and I graduated halfway through my instructor tour. And while I was there, you know, it was like taking lot a lot of CAD courses, a lot of programming and I was like, hey, we need to push the curriculum to be more digital because's that's the future, right?

Elvis: O100.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeaheah. This is back in 2016, so it was already really, really prevalent out in the industry, but it was just the military was behind. So our new curriculum that got pushed out, and it was getting developed while I was there. It was heavily relied on the digital workflows. You, they ordered a bunch of formlab printers. And then, we were big into, the Serirona CAD cam cas, you know, the in lab system. Yeah, yeah. So were before we were mainly predominantly in lab. And then there was a shift towards Exocad. So most of the new technicians are going to be familiar with Dexocad that are graduating.

Elvis: That's awesome. What, what a jump for them though from in lab Toxocad.

Vladimir: Yeah. You know, they both have their roles.

Elvis: Oh, of course.

Vladimir: Yeah. I think inl lab was a really user friendly, really cohesive, like almost seamless way to get a crown in and out really fast.

Elvis: Yeah.

Vladimir: But the complex stuff, you know, you really needed the exocad or a three shape. Most labs didn't have three shape. There was very few that had. Most of them nowadays are going toa have exocad.

Elvis: So where did you get your experience on that?

Vladimir: Well, you know, I started on the in lab back when it was like the red cam. I don't know if you remember the red cam at all.

Elvis: I do.

Vladimir: Yeah, that thing, that thing was so crazy. You know, you take one picture, you have to move it just a little bit. Take another picture and. And if you moved it wrong, you had to start from the beginning and.

Elvis: You had to spray everything.

Vladimir: Oh yeah, that, that's that scan spray was fun. I kind of got used to the smell and I started enjoying it.

Elvis: Yeah, but bad sign.

Vladimir: A bad sign, right? That's not good. When you're looking forward to the, to standing maos for day.

Elvis: When you're taking hits on your day off, that's not good.

Vladimir: You know, the lab already as it is, you know, you got the monomer and you got all the other stuff going on. Add a little scan spray, you're set. But it was a big jump going from. We used to use the slip material, the old ceramic, all ceramic, material. So I got trained on that when I was a young air man. And I was like going in there and layer by layer would build up the, the zirconia. Like it wasn't zirconia, but it was like a really strong sub substructure.

Elvis: Sure.

Vladimir: Then. And then we could, you know, stack all ceramic porcelain on top of that. And that took for, I mean, you had refractory models and all that kind of stuff you had to deal with too.

Elvis: Process.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. And so then when that, that red cam came in, even though we had to like deal picture by picture, it was still so much faster than doing it the other way. The analog, you know. And so I just started gaining more and more knowledge throughout the years. I wound up doing 20 years total in the Air Force, you know, and I went through the whole gambit from apprentice all the way up to managing labs and yeah. So been, it's been an awesome journey.


Mitch was thinking about what he wants to do after the military

Elvis: Okay. So 20 years, you've done your service, you've learned all that you can learn what'you do. Yeah.

Vladimir: So you know, about my 17, 18 year mark, I was like, hey, I got to start thinking about what I'm going to do after the military. you know, I had a deployment. I went to Iraq for a while there and had a lot of ancillary duties that kind of took a toll on the body and the mind, you know.

Elvis: And so non dental stuff they made you do.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's the military. So I got deployed to Iraq in 07. so it was like, you know, the height of operations over thereah after everything went down. And so that was like a security detail. And then, after that when I was in Japan, we were doing, I was part of something called like a cargo deployment force where we had to build these huge pallets that had to go out in case they had the jets had to deploy to Korea. And so, you know, throughout that time you kind of like, it's wear and tear on the body and then you can only do that so much. So I was looking at like seven year mark. I was like, I can't, I can't go long past 20. I got, I got to kind of ease it back and kind of take it Easy on

Elvis: 20 years is a long time for anything, man.

Vladimir: It is a long time. It is a long time. So I was like looking. Okay. I love computers. I love in a lab and I kind of want to do something digital with computers and, and looking at it. When I was at Wright pad, the assignment before my last assign, I was right pad Ohio, right. Patersson Air Force Base. So they had a 3D printer.

Elvis: I've been there.

Vladimir: You've been to Dayton, that area?

Elvis: Yeah, the Air Force base, the museum.

Vladimir: That's a beautiful museum, isn't it?

Elvis: It's awesome. It's huge.

Vladimir: It's huge. We used to love going There, like on the weekends when we had nothing to do, we would just go look at a hanger. We had to pick a hanger because you can't go through all of them one day. So we'd pick one of the hangers, look at all the airplanes in that one hangar, then go home and then save the next one for like the next week.

Elvis: You know, it is literally, an all day to not even see everything. It's that big. It's so cool.

Vladimir: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. So. So when I was there, there was a, form labs and wr pat. There was a form labs printer sitting in a corner collecting dust. And I was like, hey, what is this? You know, I just got out of tech school, being an instructor, technical training. And so I went there and we started, I started playing with it and then surgical guides, was kind of coming up in that lab. We had a couple of oral surgeons, Dr. Russell and Dr. In Goldsby, and they were doing a lot of implant cases. They're like, hey, you know, to make us faster, we could use these surgical guides. And I was like, what's that? What's the surgical guide?

Elvis: You know, they didn't teach that to you in the, in the Navy?

Vladimir: No, no. In the Air Force? No, they didn't. Because.

Elvis: Air Force. Sorry.

Vladimir: Yeah, no, that's nowhere near. Like I said, the Air Force is behind, you know, so this is like circa 2018. The Air Force is behind on like, kind of the tech, the digital side, you know, they're really competent on the analog, but the digital side, behind. So I never heard of like implant planning. I never heard of a CBCT machine. I never heard like, of all that part. Yeah, yeah. So finally I got in there and we started, you know, I started playing with some software we downloaded. we got Blue Sky Plan, and then we were kind of looking at how to design the guides. And so then, you know, working on the surgical guide kits. And I was like, hey, this is really fun. This was like, it's the best of both worlds. I got, I got the digital and then I got the hands on part after you 3D print them. And so I just love surgical guides. It was really, really fun to do. M. And so then I was like, okay, how much does a guide cost on the outside? And I was like, on average, you know, the guides were anywhere between 250 to 300 is what the doctors that I was talking to, they were saying. And I was like, okay. And then I was doing the numbers. I was like, 3D printing. It takes me this long to do it. And I was like, wow, this makes a lot of sense as a business model.

Elvis: Yeah. Doesn't take much resin, right?

Vladimir: It doesn't take much resin. And, the printers are so efficient. You know, if you're not. If you're not 3D printing now in the lab or as a dentist, you're falling behind, so you got to jump on that wave. And so that's what. That's what I did. I looked at it, and I was like, okay, so I'm gonna start my lab. So I started my lab in my basement in Ohio. I was, fighting, like, the spiders and, you know, the ghosts in my basement, trying to put some. Put something together there.


Roman Accidental Lab does 1600 surgical guides last year

And, I bought this form Labs printer. It's like a very basic. The very new one, like your newest model they had at the time. And I was like, okay. So I started doing a few cases here and there, and then I started getting busier and busier, and I was like, oh, man. You know, this is, this is kind of taken off. So then I started getting some help with some virtual. Virtual assistants. You know, I had some team members that I worked with in the past, and they helped me out remotely because I was able to set that up. And then from there, you know, it just kind of took off. I moved the lab when I PCs out of. When I left, Right Patter Center Force Base. I moved my lab here, and it was still just a single single man lab at. Back in 2020. And then, kind of kept growing. Got a little office here in Florida, and then got some more team members here locally. So it's just been growing the last couple years before I retired, you know, I was kind of growing it, and now we're up to 12 team members strong. wow. We did 1600 surgical guides last year.

Elvis: 1600.

Vladimir: Yes. Yes. 1600 surgical guides. You know, it's like our vision for Roman Accidental Lab, which is the name of our lab, is, to make, the world a better place one smile at a time. And so the way I tell my team members, that's 1600 smiles, 1600 lives that we improved. So that's, you know, that's a great impact, for our team and for our clients that we're helping out. So. Yeah, and so now we're just kind of leaff frgging every year, growing incrementally, and, you know, just love to. Love to be able to empower and enable other dentists and other labs, because at the end of the day, we're not doing a lot of restoring, you know. So some of the labs that we work with, they refer to us, the surgical guides, and then, you know, they're there to kind of finish up the case. But most of the work're see. Yeah, yeaheah. Most of the work, when you place the implant, you know, it's got to be in the right place, you know. Oh, yeah. If the implant is not in the right place, then you're gonna, like, have to do a custom abutment, you know, it's going to make the patient kind of wait a little longer. The dentist isn't going to be happier. It adds cost. So starting at the implant is really, really, like, the key to success when it comes to those kind of workflows, you know.

Elvis: So when you found this printer and said to yourself, let's do surgical guides, how did you learn about cbct, how to read it, how to look at an X ray, where the implants go?

Vladimir: Yeah, it's really good. That's a really good, question. Yeah.

Elvis: Because it's one thing to design a guide, it another thing on how to design a guide.

Vladimir: Yeah. So. So that in itself was a lot of back and forth working with the oral surgeons. it was a lot of feedback with them at the beginning. So, you know, sometimes we would look at the settings, and then the implant would be a little, like 1 millimeter short. And so I'd have to come back, go to the software and figure out, okay, why is this 1 millimeter short when everything should be right? And then, so it was like, you know, really calibrating and nailing down the settings. And I was like, why is. Why are the guides coming in too tight? Because, you know, Dr. Russell over there had to adjust the guide quite a bit. So looking at the settings, calibrating it, 3D, printing it again. And so it was just a lot of back and forth, a lot of communication, a lot of feedback, you know.

Elvis: That's so true. I remember my early days. I do a lot of surgical guides, too. And I remember placing implants and just getting a call from the doctors, like, this thing's going right through the bucckle wall. Why'd you do that? And I'm like, oh, is that what that is? You know, that's how you learn?

Vladimir: Yeah, it's a lot of trial and error. And, you know, it's a lot of. That came in the Air Force, which. The Air Force is great. It's a great training Environment. Because at, ah, your whole 20 years plus career, you're always going to be learning. Oh yeah, and that's true all the way to the very like last day I was learning stuff about CAD CAM and digital workflows. And So yeah, I got the pleasure and honor to work with some great prostodontists along the way. Dr. Harding, Dr. Bater, and then now the most latest one was Dr. Decker. So Dr. Decker, him and, and his wife, they're both prosthodontists here at Elin Air Force Base. So one is at ah, one base and the other ones. So both of them, I just learned a lot from them, you know. So it's been just a lot of opportunities that I've taken advantage of in networking and learning about the processes, workflows.

Elvis: Really finding a clinician that's willing to help you learn is the best way to do these things. It sounds like you found some killer people.

Vladimir: Yes, yes. a lot of mentorship and then a lot of collaboration. That's true. Right. You have to be able to collaborate with the dentist. And if the lab tech doesn't have good communication with the dentist, you're just going to have not the best outcome. You know, you still get a good solid restoration or prosthesis, but it's not going to be the best.


You moved from Ohio to Florida right before COVID

Elvis: So why'd you move it to Florida? Just wanted to live there.

Vladimir: No, no, at, at the time, it's like 2019. Almost 2020. Right before COVID Yeah, I was getting ready to retire, so I knew my time was going to be up in 2023. And I was expecting to stay in Dayton. I loved, the Ohio area, surprisingly, because, you know, before I went to Dayton, I like never really thought about it. And I was going to retire there, you know, love, our house, our neighbors, everything was good. And then I got put in a position from the Air Force that had nothing to do with dental for one. And then it was a very. They call it hai op'temple meaning like you had a lot of work coming and it was. I was a security manager dealing with security clearances and all that kind of stuff. But I was just really not in a good spot, you know, mentally, physically. I wasn't in a good spot. It was. I got injured my back.

Elvis: I. Oh, geez.

Vladimir: Injured my back doing some, some heavy lifting. But anyhow, I was like in a bad spot. And then everything that was pointing me towards Florida, you know, everything had like, I don't know, I just kind of looking at the signs and watching videos from Florida, ads from fl. And then all of a sudden this assignment came up. Because sometimes these assignments will come up and at that point you can volunteer for some of the assignments. Oay they were looking for a master sergeant to go to Florida. And I was like, talk to my wife, I talked to my daughter. And we were all like looking at it and I was like, well, everything seems to be point in Florida. Let's just put our name of the hat, you know. And so at that point you put your name of the hat. Everybody wants to go to Florida. Essentially in the Air Force, it's a desirable assignment.

Elvis: A little bit more inviting than Ohio.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, but I loved Ohio. I really did.

Elvis: Hey, I'm in Indiana, man.

Vladimir: Yeah, you know what it'like right? Yeah, yeah, it was, it was great. And so, you know, we got selected, it got picked up for Florida. And then we came down here to Eglin Air Force Base, which is right by Destin Florida. You know, we, it's been a journey here the last five years. We got here right at the end of COVID And so, it was like night and day. You know, Ohio was locked down. Everybody was like pretty much still in their houses and not much movement going on. We get to Florida and everybody's like spring break over here, you know? Yeah, it was like night and day.

Elvis: That's funny. Oh, good old Covid days.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah. Andeah. So that's when I moved the lab to. Because I had to change PCs stations.

Elvis: Sure.

Vladimir: Yeah. And so most of the growth has been down here in Florida.

Elvis: So how did you grow it? Were you working with Dennis that left the Air Force or.

Vladimir: I had a few, yeah, I had a few of those doctors. But vast majority, came from just having word of mouth. You know, if you have a really good quality product, they'renn, they're gonna tell their colleagues and from there, you know, the words is gonna spread. And then next thing you know, you're inundated with work. And what made us really competitive was our prices and our turnaround times. If a doctor sends us a plan, let's say like in the morning, 9:00am they're going to get a plan ready to approve. 9:00am the next day.

Elvis: Oh, 24 hour turnaround on plans.

Vladimir: Ye, treatment plan that's like virtual tooth waxed up, in position and occlusion. Got the implant placed, all the nerves and everything marked. And then if any segmentation for bone guides, we'll do that as well. But they'll get all that the next day ready for approved. So our workflow is pretty fast. And then our turnaround time, if they approve, let's say they send us the case on a Monday, they approve the case Tuesday morning, it's shipping out Wednesday. our workflows are really fast. And I think that's really important for the clients. You know, they really appreciate that because when you're doing implants, you know, the last thing you want is a patient to back out of a treatment because they the Change their mind 100%.

Elvis: Yeah. Get it going. Yeah.

Vladimir: So I think that's the key is making sure that they get a good product in a really fast turnaround time, you know. And so that's how we've been able to g gain our clientele. But at the same time making that scalable is challenging in the lab. You know, everything has to go according to plan for that to happen. And so ourrual virtual work, like our remote workers are key to that. If you're not using virtual assistants or virtual workers in the lab, I think you're doing yourself a, this service, you know.

Elvis: So you have ah, people planning these cases that aren't in Florida, not in your building.

Vladimir: Yeah, absolutely. So they're planning it from you know, Texas. I had somebody working in Colorado for a while and then I had some of these technicians I've trained and worked with personally. So I know how they work, you know, and operate. And then we also have just some administrative team members that like, you know, they track orders, they communicate with clients, they respond to emails. I like to think of it as a principle. It's like from the military. Right. It's called centralized control, decentralized execution. So all these team members are working across different places, but you're still able to control it from one hub, one lab.


I see so many CBTT scans that come in that are garbage

Elvis: Interesting. So a doctor sends in a case. Is there someone that kind of Q sees it? Because I see so many CBTT scans that come in. They're just like, dude, this is garbage. I can, can do anything with this.

Vladimir: Yeah, you know, the software does a lot of, a lot of the editing and kind of filtering out of the cbct. but we do have somebody that initially looks at the scans and makes sure we have everything we need. A lot of doctors that we send stuff back for are either like the intro scans are not accurate or maybe the CBCT is only a quadrant scan. We can still work with those cases and we let the doctor know, hey doctor, you know, you're going to get a guide, but in order to be really accurate, you want to have a full arch CBCT scan and you want to have a full arch internal scan without, you know, a lot of, distortion or a lot of scatter or anything like that. And you know, outside of that, we do have someone QC and everything before it comes in.


Ye, this is probably a personal question for me because I do some surgical guides

Elvis: Ye, this is probably a personal question that for me because I do some surgical guides. If you get a CBCT scan and that's got a lot of scatter, is there anything that the doctor can do on their end to lessen the scatter?

Vladimir: yeah, you know, if it's stuff that's fixed, if it's stuff that's like a, like an implant, you can'you. Can't really reduce the scatter. Right. But if it's something like IND denture that they're wearing or an RPD they're wearing, I would have them take that off when they take the Y. I get that.

Elvis: But just some of these, you got a full mouth of PFMS's and it's just like, what am I supposed to do with this?

Vladimir: Yeah, let me ask you this. What software you using?

Elvis: Oh yeah, great. I do a few of them. So I do COD diagnostic and I do real guide and I've messed with unite a little bit.

Vladimir: Okay. Check out Blue Sky Plan.

Elvis: Are you still using that?

Vladimir: Your Blue sky plan is really good at clearing up the scatter.

Elvis: Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vladimir: And that's the majority of our work. We're looking at switching to three shape for the implant studio. But Blue Sky Plan has been, our bread and butter. And yeah, the great thing about Blue Sky Plant is that the doctors can view their plans at their clinics, like without having to pay any software fees or any dongles or nothing. So if a doctor wants to review the plan in a 3, 6 degree environment, they can do that free of charge with Blue Sky Plant.

Elvis: oh, can they move the implants?

Vladimir: They can move the implants. They can get it exactly where they want it and they can. They. Usually we have some clients that do that. They'll, you know, they don't want to take the time to do all the editing and adding teeth and nerve mapping and all that kind of stuff. So, so we'll do all that for them. They take a look at the plan, they view it in a 360 degree environment. They make tweaks, minor movements, maybe go in a little deeper the bone, maybe have this angle, whatever they want spend five minutes or less and then save the plan and then it automatically syncs it back to our lab. So then after that the plan implants placed and then we take it from there. You know, we designed the guide and print it out and that kind of thing.

Elvis: That's a nice feature to be able to let them do those final tweakings rather than 13 emails to move an implant it.

Vladimir: Yeah. The goal for us is to minimize the amount of time that the doctor is spending, you know, reviewing the case and making updates now. And there are times, especially if it's like, you know, all on four and all on six, we meet virtually with the doctor. So we'll meet with the doctor live and then make any live updates, one of our technicians. And then at that point, you know, it does take maybe 10, 15 minutes to go over the case, depending if it's like a single arch or multiple arch, you know.

Elvis: Yeah. So you do those bone reduction guides and all of that?

Vladimir: Oh yeah, yeah, we do a lot of those. I think we're maybe like four or five a week we're designing and printing out.

Elvis: Wow.

Vladimir: Yeah, Yeah. A lot of our workflows are, are just bone reduction. But some of the doctors really like doing the immediate loading prostheses.

Vladimir: So we'll 3D print the immediate loading prosthesis ready for the doctors to do like a temporary pickup. And then you know, they can do that one one day surgery smile workflow that they like.

Elvis: Are you doing it so the prostheses connects to the stackable guide or.

Vladimir: Yep, yep, you can, you can do it that way. There's a lot of different workflows that we implement depending on the case. The more reliable one is to use you know, stabilizing pins to orient the bone reduction guide. And then you would, you would do an osteotum guide that either interlocks or has magnets attached to it however you.

Elvis: Want to be magts. Wow.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, you can use little magnets to connect them. It just depends.

Elvis: You get your magnets hobby lobby or.

Vladimir: No, they're like really small, like 4 millimeter magnets from Amazon, you know, and you can incorporate them into the guide so then that they're like, covered in resin and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's pretty seamless for the doctor. It's whatever the doctor likes. Some doctors hate the magnets and they're like, I don't want to use the magnets. They're terrible.

Elvis: Yeah.

Vladimir: And so, so then we'll do something more interlocking, maybe with, like, some pins or something like that. Or some doctors are like, I don't want the pins. They're kind of a pain. Get in and out. So then instead of the pins holding the osteotomic guide on the bone reduction guide, it'll just sit, like, right on top of it and index by itself on top of the bone reduction guide, you know, and so it just depends on the client's preference, whatever their preference is. And then the key thing is that, the MUAs and all that have to match to where that prosthesis is going to be at. Ah, the temporary hybrid. Right. And so that's the key there. Making sure that everything's lined up for them when they go to pickup. It minimizes their surgical time, you know, immensely when you do that. Right.

Elvis: Wow. So you got 12 people designing all these things.

Vladimir: we have four designers, and then the rest are, like, admin ancillary team members. So they're dealing with, customer care. They're doing our inventory supply. And, you know, I talked to a lot of, other, like, fellow lab owners, and I try to encourage them, hey, if you're not having remote workers doing the stuff, that's, you know, because you don't want your experienced technician having to update inventory or, like, reorder supplies or have to deal with, like, a refund issue, you know, so you want your lab technicians to be doing the lab work that's going to be more efficient and more productive. So for every LAPT TEC we have here on site, we have two virtual assistants supporting them.

Elvis: Oh, I see. Wow.

Vladimir: Yeah. And I think that was the key for me, being able to step back and not just do it all myself all day, every day. You know, I got those two first two virtual assistants helped me out, and that enabled me to get enough growth and profit to hire another technician.


Are you still designing cases? I do the complex stuff

Elvis: Another one? Yeah. Are you still designing cases?

Vladimir: I do the complex stuff, so I like to do, like, because, you know, it's just fun for me. It's kind of like playing video. Right.

Elvis: No, I get it. I get it. I love figuring it out. Yeah.

Vladimir: Yeah. So. So it's kind of fun. I get to pick and choose the complex and fun cases now. And so, but sometimes, you know, I get a little overwhelmed. I got to work on the business itself, so I have to take a step back and say, hey, you know, Preston, you get this one. So, yeah, that kind of thing is kind of fun, being able to pick and choose which.

Elvis: Well, what's a complicated case for you. Is it hard bone to find to place the implant or is it just.

Vladimir: It's the number oflants. Yeah, it's. So the harder cases are, the upper and lower all in six. You know, you got 12 implants, sometimes even more. And then you have to make sure that the kit and everything matches to the doctor'kit and so that's the hardest part. And, I kind of take on those kits that are very like, very not well known, you know, like the Nobel Biocare, the Blue Sky Bio, the Strauman, the you know, the bioio. Those are real easy to do. It's the Autom age. It's that miss. It's the mega gens. It's the hyacinth that are like get tricky, you know, or like the universal real guide. It's very like very new. So like, the very like, not popular surgical guides are the ones that I kind of focus on because you really have to take the time to get those settings right. If you don't get those settings right, implants'going to go through a nerve. Implants'going to go through the sinus. You know, it's just not going to be good for.

Elvis: I learned the hard way making sure you knew exactly what surgical kit the doctor has when making a guide.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah.

Elvis: He goes, I have Astra. I was like, what could go wrong? Picked Astra. None of them fit because it was a certain Astra. So that's my tip of the day.

Vladimir: Yeah. And sometimes it's not. It's not anything you did. Sometimes it's a software update. And this has been my pet peeve. I hate software. But it's a software update. And it'll. The software will select the wrong tube or wrong cylinder. Even though, you know it's saying it is. It's supposed to be good, but it's the wrong cylinder. I had this happen yesterday or a day before.

Elvis: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Vladimir: Do we had a doctor from New Jersey, they got their case and say, hey, they. The wrong cylinder was inserted and your drill report says the wrong cylinder. And I looked at it and I was like, it does say the wrong cylinder. So it was a bug in the software that was spitting out the wrong cylinder. But now we know on that particular kit with that particular implant diameter, we have to look and make sure. So it's just a lot of those nuances that you come across. And I hate updating software for that reason.

Elvis: And every implant system will come out with a new part every other week.

Vladimir: And I'm likeeah, that's, that's tricky.

Elvis: I like, what is this? We just brought it out. I'm like, it's not in my soft. But you have to use it. That doesn't make sense.

Vladimir: That is very time consuming. Very hard to figure out if it's not in the software.

Elvis: Yeah, I wish we could just do one implant system. I'd be a happy person.

Vladimir: Yeah. It's funny you say that, because while I was in the Air Force, they were only able to pick like two implant systems. You either, you either get Nobel or you get Strauman. And that's it, you know.

Elvis: Nice.

Vladimir: And it made it real easy in the Air Force, but when I came out, that's not the case, right?

Elvis: No, no. I think it's about every three months I hear about an implant I didn't even know existed. I hear one. I bet you you get it all the time.

Vladimir: All the time, all the time. And you know, it's great for the companies because they're innovating, they're making better products and they're, they're making it easier. Like, you know, when, when surgical kits went from a keyed kit where they had to insert these little sleeves.

Elvis: Yeah.

Vladimir: Keyless kit. That was like a huge, huge improvement for them. And it was a huge improvement for us because the software makes it real easy to switch to different lengths, different sizes with the keys. It was a little trickier to calculate all that, you know.

Elvis: Yeah. But I never knew which one had the keyed and who had the key list. And that's where I mess up.


If anybody's in the market thinking about getting into dental printing, make sure

That's why I learned you gotta ask. And you have to ask somebody that knows. Not the front desk that just says, I think so.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, we've been there. We've been there too many times. And I'm like a stickler when it comes to verifying the kid. So we have different, different checkpoints when we do our workflow. So when it comes in, we have to verify the kit. when you plan it, you verify the kit. When the plan gets qc, you verify the kit. And so on and so forth through the whole gambit, you know, and if I can see in there in our system, hey, Michelle, you did not verify the kit. What happened here? It turned, you know, it turns out to be good, but then you wind up catching a lot of those.

Elvis: Sure. I'm going to demand a picture of their kit. Send me your. I want to know which one you have.

Vladimir: It's important. It's really important. When you're doing surgical guides.

Elvis: You talked about formum labs at the beginning. What are you printing all these things on now?

Vladimir: You know, it just depends on what resin you're going to be using. So we have access to form labs, we have access to the Sprint ray, we have access to some of the hobby printers. we have the next 5100'a really solid printer. So it just depends on what the application is. You know, for the surgical guides, I probably recommend doing the next step. resin. That's a really good resin. But then again, you know, Formabs is a really great printer when it comes to delegating. And it's got a huge, huge print platform. So that kind of just depends on what we're doing for today. But we have 12 different printers at our lab, and. Well, I think we different, not 12 different, but we have 12 printers, and each one is dedicated to that specific material.

Elvis: You don't swap out materials.

Vladimir: No, no, you don't swap out materials because, when you swap out materials, you know, you have waste and it takes time and then you got to buy more vats and then you gott. You know, so it's just a nightmare having. So if anybody's in the market thinking about getting into dental printing, make sure you have a plan to make it scalable, you know, if you're not making it scalable when it comes to. And I learned this in the Air Force, like when I got to, Wright, Pa, Ohio, we had that one printer and it was great for surgical guides. But guess what? The orthodontist needed to print some models to their indirect bonding trays. So then you had to swap out the resin. So then we had to go to the commanders, say, hey, commander, we need more printers. Look at the output we're getting. So he bought us three formlpse printers. And then from there we designated each one. One was for models, one was the surgical guides. The other one was for temp crown resin or whatever, you know. But at that point, then it becomes really easy to kind of just come in and make everything streamlined.

Elvis: yeah. And you only do what models, surgical guides and the occasional prosthesis if they want it.

Vladimir: Yeah, we have hard night guards as well, which, you know, we don't do too many of them. But we have the key splint by key soft. Or is it key soft by key splint? I forget what it is. But we have that material for hard night carards. We have denture material. We do the temporary crown and bridge. We're Getting into, printing the bago, Trinity Qu. I think it's Trinity. Qh. Yeah, the new permanent crowned bridge. So we're looking at testing that out here soon. We do a rod in for the all N X cases, that tightan full AR case resin. And then, I mean, I love the next den surgical guide resin. We've used a lot of other different surgical guide resins, but, the next ST is like the best, I think, in my opin.

Elvis: Why? What makes it better? I mean, it's a surgical guide. It just needs to click on and a hold a cylinder.

Vladimir: You know, it's very consistent. It's very easy to grind our supports the way we design our supports, you know, because everything takes time. So when you're in there and you're designing supports for some of these other resins, they tend to clump up. So like that all those supports that are in there, sometimes dependingending on the resin, they tend to just wind up into one huge glob. And so our technicians have to spend like way too much time trying to remove the support. So with the next thing, man, you can get those supports really small and really thin. And so, you know, it really comes into dialing the settings on the printer, but when you do that, it almost comes off like Velcro. So you're in there, you clip a couple of the large supports, you do a little twist. And I just love to hear that little Velcro coming off the guide, you know.

Elvis: No, I just like.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So when it does that. And that's why I like nextentt residents for surgical guides.

Elvis: Yeah, interesting. And you, it's, it's funny that you say it's mostly because of the supports.

Vladimir: Yeah. you know, supports are like, man, that's another, that's another thing you really have to consider when you're 3D printing, if you don't place your supports.


You have to manually add supports to 3D printed parts to prevent failure

Like let's take a crown, for example. If you're 3D printing a crown and you put a support on, on the contact, you're just going toa be setting yourself up for failure. It's like adding a sprue, an inappproximal contact when you're milling 1%.

Elvis: Yeah.

Vladimir: You're going to be in there grinding forever. So in order to do that, you really have. Your technicians are doing the nesting. Really have to take their time. So, like, we have team members that only do nesting.

Elvis: Wow.

Vladimir: So their whole job is to take a surgical guy, the prostheses, a bo, whatever it is, and all they're doing is adding these supports manually. So they go step by step and they're manually adding. And it's very time consuming but at the same time it saves way more time on the back end having to grind and having a mill and having to redo all these different things that have to fit, you know, precise.

Elvis: Are you saying the automatic supports the software gives you not enough or too many?

Vladimir: It's both. Sometimes it's not enough and sometimes it's too many. It just depends on what you're printing out, you know. And so we have we have like, you know, a step by step support instruction. You start out with like minimal supports for the light supports and then you manually have to add medium supports to certain sections and then look at the heavy stuff. So we go from light to heavy and then you have to look at the heavy stuff. Is this part that's printing going to be able to get supported by what's there? No. Then we add a heavy. So it's time consuming. And that's again, that's the key to making sure you don't have a print failure. It's way more time consuming to have a print failure, have to clean the vat, have to filter out the resin than it is to spend more time nesting and adding supports manually.

Elvis: Come on, AI, this is where you should be working on right now is better supports.

Vladimir: I mean, see, I don't like, you know, I understand we're moving towards AI and all that, but you know what's better than AI is intelligence. So when we have a technician doing it the right way, you know, artificial intelligence is not going to measure up yet, I don't think. No, I don t think. Not for these things. You're always going to need the labpt tech looking at this stuff.

Elvis: You know, you would think the computer would get closer to the supports needed. You know what I mean?

Vladimir: Yeah, you would think. And then, you know, you're over there scraping the failure out of your vat and it'not working. I've done that way too many times.

Elvis: Not.

Vladimir: And the auto supports were enough, you know.

Elvis: Yeah, I get it.


Romanax offers training on how to do surgical guides and 3D printing

So do you teach people how to do surgical guides? Do I see this on your website?

Vladimir: I love to train people on how to do surgical guides. I have a course that we put together. We also have some 3D printing, I think education opportunities. We have a webinar coming up on the 24th of February talking about surgical guides.

Elvis: Nice.

Vladimir: We're going to be going over some of our workloads that we mentioned here. And then, you know, I love to train doctors and other labs that would work with. Because it is like ah, a give and take, you know. So some of our dentists and some of our laptics want to print out their own guides. So what we'll do is we'll get the, the plan, we'll treatment plan it, we'll get all the scans together and then we'll send an STL filog to be printed at a lab. And so the lab will take it from there and they'll finish it. But they need to know how to like finish that and how to nest that kind of surgical guide, you know. So then we'll work with them one on one and do some training like that.

Elvis: That's great. So what's the best way for people to get a hold of you? The Roman, how do you say Roman? Acts.

Vladimir: Yeah, Roman acts. So if you go to our website, www.romanax.com, you know, you can, you can book a meeting with one of our technicians, you can place an order. We have free demos too, if anybody wants to get a free surgical guide and see if it'll work out for their lab or for their clinic. You know, sometimes it just doesn't click or whatever. Our workflow is, not efficient. Like we don't do a lot of stone models. I don't think we've gotten a model in like three months.

Elvis: I would hope not.

Vladimir: All of our stuff's digital, you know, and, and if there's a doctor out there that really likes to take impressions, like, you know, we're probably not the lab to work with on that. We'll definitely out, like let them know, kind of reference them to a great lab that we'll be able to do that, but it's just not in our workflow. We can't handle that, you know.

Elvis: Yeah, but you are doing crown and bridge, right? I mean you're doing regular lab work. I say regular but non surgical guide lab work.

Vladimir: Yeah, we're doing crown and bridge. Like I said, it's not our majority. It's not like our bread and butter. I think 95% of our cases, our surgical guides and then the other 5%, like the night cards, the dentures, the crown bridge. So it's not, it's not like a huge part of our, our workflow. And in fact, I personally don't like to get into that realm. I'd rather have one of these labs that's got a mill access to them because we don't have a single Mill in our lab. It's all 3D different.

Elvis: Wow.

Vladimir: yeah, so I, I rather outsource this. The milled restorations, the zirconia out to to those labs that have invested in that, in the numbers. For me, it doesn't make sense for me to mill out a $40 crown and pay $40,000 for a milal machine. You know, how many crowns am I gonna have to make in order to make that money? Lot.

Elvis: A lot. Yeah.

Vladimir: It just didn't make a lot of sense where now you're getting permanent restorations that are becoming 3D. 3D printed. So I think we're just go, goingna skip milling and just go straight to 3D printing finals. That's, that's our next initiative that we're working on here.

Elvis: It's definitely getting there. I imagine these doctors you're doing these all on X guides for are coming back to you asking you to do the restorative part of it too. The finals.

Vladimir: They do and like I said, we do, we do it on a we finish those final cases on a case by case basis. But I honestly would hand them off to like a trusted lab that they've worked with in the past. Yeah, I don't want to kind of dissuade them in a way where hey, like, you know, I'm not an expert when it comes to million out all the next cases. I'm an expert in 3D printing and designing them, but I'm not going to not. I'm not an expert in mil now. So I send that you know, we basically partner with the milling center and work hand in hand to do them. But it's not a huge part of our workflow, you know.

Elvis: Sure.

Vladimir: I think that the resins that are coming out and especially you know, for the, all the next cases, the residents that are coming out are becoming a very, very good source to do like a long term temporary. And so from there, you know, once the implants have healed, they'll probably have to go to traditional route and you know, get a zirconia or a barmaid or something like that or those labs.


How is your relationship with implant companies? Are they good with you using not their software

Elvis: How is your relationship with the implant companies? Are they good with you using not their software? I mean they all have their own now.

Vladimir: Yeah, you know, it's it's good. I think I'd love to get in touch with more reps from the implant manufacturers. we work a lot with Bio Horizon.

Vladimir: Down here is a great sales rep here in the panhandle area. We worked a little bit with the Nobel and the Strah reps, but, honestly, you know, I think there's opportunity there that we're not, able to flourish. And I'd love to work with some implant reps in the future. Without having a lot of knowledge about the implant system, it's really hard to get a good guide to the client.

Elvis: 100%. Yeah.

Vladimir: So, you know, our technicians are very aware of the different systems out there. And then if it's something new, it's probably going to come to me, and then I have to do a lot of research and talk to the, manufacturer about the nuances and differences in their kit or their system. But, yeah, that's something that I would love to. Love to work with in the future. With any, sales reps or implant reps out there?

Elvis: Yeah, the ones that I do, I always try to send the plan also to the local rep. And I'm like, I need you to sign off on this, too, and make sure this doctor has these parts and is ready to go and it fits his kit or her kit. You know, I just. I like to connect all my dots because there's been a few times where I haven't and it's not been good.

Vladimir: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a learning process. And we do a lot of that research in house, but if not, we'always like, happy to call the manufacturer and clarify something. most of the time the dentist will be like, I don't know, I need to talk to my sales rep. And I say, hey, don't worry, ah, about Dennis. We'll call him and talk, talk with them about it. Just give us their numbers. So we'll have to do that quite often.

Elvis: Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's got to be a. It's got to be a group effort every time.

Vladimir: It is, it is. If you want, you know, the best product and outcome for that patient and keep them happy and, you know, have them go tell their friends and family to come back and get more dental implant work done, then you got to do that, you know, so that's our. That's our goal.

Elvis: Yeah.


Will you make it to Chicago next year? I've always wanted to go

So will we see you in Chicago in a few weeks? Do you go up to lab day or.

Vladimir: you know what? I've always wanted to go. I've never been. I have an engagement in Colorado Spring shortly around that time. And so, I have a buddy of mine from the Air Force that's retiring, so I won't make it to Chicago. Midwinter this year, but our goal is to go next year.

Elvis: Awesome.


Elis: I think you need to be talking about surgical guides

You should. I think you need to be talking about surgical guides. I don't think enough people do it in our industry that's not from a company, if that makes sense. If not from an implant company. And there's a few really good people out there that share that knowledge and I think it's important. I think there's a lot of people doing surgical guides that, that aren't as knowledgeable as they should be.

Vladimir: Yeah, I definitely love to educate. Like, you know, when I was instructing in the Air Force, I realized that that's like my third passion when it comes to the industry. so first computer science, then it's the actual lab work and then third is teaching. So yeah, I'd love to teach. I do have like one on one sessions if anybody is interested in that. On the website I have the course, the basic implant planning course. Everything you need to know from A to B to get a surgical guide is in that course. And then we're working on doing like an all and X, like complex case course. That one's just like, it's on the back burner right now because we're just trying to keep up with operations nowadays, you know?

Elvis: Yeah, I think that's great because even when you get software, the training from those companies is not that good.

Vladimir: Yeah, every software is a little different and we try to stick with what works. And so for right now, Blue Sky Plan has been pretty much our go to with you know, sometimes we'll throw a little like Fusion Works or something like, like blender something in there that's a little different. But m, most of the time for your basic surgical guys, Blue Sky Plan can do that really, really well.

Elvis: That's awesome. Well, Valemr, that's Did I say it right?

Vladimir: Vladimir?

Elvis: It's okay, Vladimir. I'll get it. Vladimir, thank you so much, man. That's some really cool stuff. I love what you're doing. I love you built a lab around surgical guides. I think it's so neat. I think if I was ever going to do it, I'd probably go that route.

Vladimir: Thanks Elvis. It's been an honor, a pleasure, really. I really appreciate you taking your time to have me on your podcast. I love your podcast. Like I said, I love listening to you guys.

Elvis: Appreciate that, appreciate that. But seriously, I mean, surgical guides, it's what kept me interested in this industry for so long and I really enjoyed doing it and it was really great to talking to someone that has that same passion.

Vladimir: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Elis. I appreciate. I appreciate everything.

Elvis: Yeah. Thank you, sir. And, if we won't see you this year, we'll see you next year in Chicago.

Vladimir: Absolutely, we will.

Elvis: Yeah. Have a good one.

Vladimir: Have a good one. Ellis.


A huge thanks to Vladimir for coming on our podcast and entertaining Elvis

Barbara: A huge thanks to Vladimir for coming on our podcast and definitely entertaining Elvis with all of your implant and surgical guide talk. It was actually really interesting to hear your story and all that you have accomplished. Pretty amazing and very quick, and I'm happy to say you're in Florida. We especially thank you for your service, obviously. And now the service you are offering to other labs. If any labs out there get requests to do surgical guides, but you are looking for a good outsource option, check out RomanX.com R OASH M M A N A X.COMT but also if you are a lab looking to learn surgical guides, Also check out RomanX.com do to see some of the courses that will set you on the right path. Thank you, Vladimir, and good luck to you.

Elvis: All right, everybody, I'm heading to Chicago. Barb, you will be missed and we will talk to everyone next week.

Barbara: All right, bye. You and I will be.

Vladimir: Huh?

Barbara: what?

Elvis: I said woohoo.

Vladimir: Oh, sorry.

Barbara: You and I will be at the end.

Elvis: The views and opinions expressed on the Voices from the Ben podcasts are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the host or Voices from the Bench llc.