Hey, voices from the bench community Jennifer Ferguson from I'm Here with a quick shout out to all programming, PM seven users and those thinking about joining the club on July 1st. We launched the AI block module that's powered by intelligent automation that optimizes tool paths and saves you serious time. I'm talking up to 45% faster milling. You want to know what the best part is? You can try it for free for 90 days. No pressure, no commitment. Do you want in? All you have to do is shoot us a message on Instagram at. Or you can email me at Jennifer Ferguson and we'll get you set up. Welcome to voices from the bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an email at info. Voices from the bench. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Greetings and welcome to episode 383 of voices from the bench. My name is Elvis. My name is Barbara. Barbara. What's happening? How are you? I am in bed sick as a dog. Oh, no, you can't miss. This is important. What do you got? You got the vid. The flu, the, I don't know, er, stomach. It's just. You missing any work or. No, it's just started last night. I was up from 2 to 7. Oh my gosh. Go back to sleep. And then. Hey. Sorry, I just got up. Okay, okay. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. Wow. That's rough. Well, I appreciate you sticking it out and, uh, meeting up with us and recording, so let's go. Yeah. So let's just get you back to bed. So this week, we are back with some more great conversations that we got at the xo cad booth at IDs 2025. Barb, did you even know about the singing dentist before we got to talk to him? No, but you told me, and I pulled it up. And while we were talking to him, I was looking at it, so I connected with him. You know everything. It's hard not to know about him because he's, like, all over social media and has well over half a million followers on Instagram alone. But, you know, apparently he does more than just sing because Doctor Millard Shahrud stopped by with another dentist from Liverpool, doctor Robbie Hughes. And they were funny. What they're doing is pretty awesome because first they both give us a background into their careers. I try to get them to talk more about the singing, but he, you know, he had other things on his plate. So but it's what they're doing together that's like super cool. They started avant garde dentistry and education, where they take dentists at different skill levels and get them comfortable and confident with digital workflows. Then we meet the CTO of a line you know, the parent company of Invisalign, Kitaro and even XO CAD Zuko Relic. He stops by to talk about his career into dental. How a line spends over $300 million a year on R&D to keep above the curve in technology, and how they scale a business that manufactures 1 million custom parts a day. And what's next in the leaders of clear line industry? He was super, super great. And then we wrap up the episode with Ben Weber from Module Works. What is module works. Well, it's basically in almost everything electronic and certainly in a lot of mills and printers in our labs. It's really hard to connect what it is. You struggled a little bit. I got it a little bit. But you had you had to really work. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's not quite the cam software. It's kind of like what's behind the Cam software. And in between that and the user interface. It's interesting, but it's a little hard to grasp. But Ben comes on to talk about his role in the company, and he does a much better job describing exactly what it is and what it does. So join us as we chat with Doctor Mallard, Shahrud Doctor, Robbie Hughes, Jellico, Relic and Ben Weber. Voices from the bench. The interview. Inside in the Booth. Yes. Yes. Barbara. Hi, Barbara. How are you guys already? Good to meet you. Happy to have you on. I hear of great things, but I'll let Elvis. So this is exciting a little bit because we're we're hogging the hallway. Yeah. So here we are. Exo card booth at IDs 2025. And our good friend Leo from XO. CAD brings over two gentlemen celebrities, and he goes, hey, I got two people I want you to talk to. I have Doctor Robbie Hughes and I, other than just saying the singing dentist. Doctors. Doctor. Mallard. Cha cha cha. Pretty good. Not bad. Right? Excellent. But I know you because you're the singing, Dennis. I'm the singing. Dancing. The really nice gold chain. By the way, how do you. How do you become the the singing dentist? Um. You want. To be a musician. But your father forces you to do dentistry? No, seriously. Yeah. Do you have a music background? Yeah, yeah. My dad's a musician, and I've always done music. And then one day I just started freestyling about dentistry when a patient didn't show up online, and he blew up. Nine years later. Nine. You started that nine years ago. It's crazy. That is still second song. Are you still a dentist? And you do that? Yes. I'm still not a full time singing. No, I wish I was moving that way. On the way. Yeah, yeah. But you're still still doing dentistry. And I'm still enjoying stuff. And obviously with the new innovations and tech and stuff, it's exciting. Right? Yeah. After 21 years of being in the industry, if it wasn't exciting and things were happening and you're able to make change, I think yeah, we would have down towards a while ago. Do you have a you're doing a show here like a live show. Like a band and a concert or not. Not now, but maybe a good idea in two years time. Yeah. Will there be bring the band out? And was that performing Thursday night? Go see the singing Dennis over at some pub. Perfect. Sounds like you guys. Doctor Robbie Hughes. How do you guys know each other? So we know each other from mutual friends in the industry. About five years ago, me and my lad met up, had a few conversations about some of the things that I was doing with my education company and my lab, and trying to connect a few dots around sort of improving accessibility for patients to quality standardized digital dentistry. And that's where some of our sorts of ideas and synergies aligned, essentially. Um, and we've been working together for the last five years with, with our company, Avant Garde Dentistry. So you're a dentist and you have a lab, dentist, lab education. Yeah. Really? We're in Liverpool, UK. Oh, nice. So you guys have a company together and individual practices? Yes, yes, yes. So Robbie's in the north of England? I'm in Liverpool. Very famous. I'm further down south, so very close to London. So between us we kind of cover majority of the Balkan, but we have people coming from all over for the education side and, you know, through the power of the internet and, and the digital world, we can connect with so many people. And so what is the company so avant garde dentistry is, um, first and foremost an education journey for dentists. So the focus is digital workflows, just trying to create solutions and efficiency for um, dentists to be trained in as the most simple form possible, to give them the confidence to go away. And do you know, high quality, well standardised dentistry. Once we've educated the dentists, then we integrate them into our community, which all starts with lab support basically. So treatment planning services, lab manufacturing processes and we sort of like hold the hand through the digital workflow, um, are prominent focuses, smile makeovers. But you know, that then obviously includes all disciplines, right. So we're our partners with a line and we have implant workflows and everything sort of comes together quite nicely. Were you mostly teaching young doctors? It's mixed. It's a real big mix. And we even have courses for therapists, right. Because we're trying to include the whole team because nowadays dentistry is a team effort. It's not just, you know, the dentist and they do everything. We've talked to a therapist, and I thought it was an actual psychological therapy, to be fair. We all need. We all need the psychological therapists as well. Yes. We had one on the podcast in Mallorca. Mallorca? Yes. Oh, they are needed, but no. So dental therapists, they can do like a lot of composite workflows, right? Which is great because then you're bringing the whole team in. And so we train therapists. We have young dentists. But then we also have, like I said earlier, right. We have dentists that are 20 years in that are just looking to reignite the flame in, in their, in their career. You know, when you're doing the same thing all the time, it just gets a bit mundane. You get a bit, you're just uninspired. But with the technology, with the the amazing stuff we can do now and because it's become so much more predictable. It's a worry element of the years gone by has kind of gone. You know, patients can really see it, visualize. And patients are way more educated now too. Right. So the expectations are even higher. So you've got to up your game and having partners and kind of the support networks that we have in dentistry, that's really important. And that's what we're so proud of with our community of avant garde dentists. There really is a big, big kind of range of people that are in it. Is it hard to get England involved in technology. Is this an issue? Do you? Absolutely. No. Okay. Do they come to you already? What? Technology. And say, how do I use this? You know, the pattern over the last five years is the first of all. We come with scanners, right? And that's just the entry point into this. So it's what you physically do with the scan and how you connect that into a workflow. Um, and that's where, you know, the digital lab for me has become so important in that element. You know, extra CAD design. Having a trusted digital lab partner is so important to complement that workflow for the for the dentist, so they can communicate well with the lab, with the patients. Use all the great visualization tools and diagnostic tools like Tru Smile and all these things now that we have. So the dentists are definitely aware and they're just trying to connect the dots. It's like, you know, how do I buy these tools but then make everything simplified and efficient? Much of it. Exactly. And they want efficiency, right. Especially as margins are getting squeezed with the economy. So we want time efficiency. And that's a big focus with us at Avant Garde. We want predictable workflows, things that you can do efficiently to a high standardized way. But operationally you can become profitable as well. And that's why dentists, I think, come to us, because it's a really sort of fully holistic approach to the business of dentistry as well. Well, it's got to be hard to drop all this money. And use it efficiently to make money off. Exactly. I can't tell you how many offices I go into, and there's a scanner sitting in the corner, and I'm like, it's not. Or they have an in office and it's not working here. Like it's just not doing anything right now. Yeah. I mean and sometimes it's, it's the, it's that inspiration you need to get up off and and do the thing. Yeah. Exactly that. Right. You need that kick because you buy something. And if you don't immediately start using or you don't have the kind of will and drive to want to use it, it can very easily just be sort of left there. And also it's the reasons that people get into it initially, like people were buying scanners because they were thinking of the cost of the scanner versus the cost of alginate impression material. Yeah. That's it. I'm not going to save money. So why am I going to buy this? That's completely not the reason why you're buying. Nobody says that anymore. No. Now, we've moved on from that. It's great. But people want to maximize. And also because there's so much more, you know, people in the game, but it's picking the right companies to work with, picking the right tools to bring into your system. And we feel we have on guard. We've we've taken a while to find really the right kind of partners, the right team, the right things to create this holistic workflow. Then you can do comprehensive dentistry properly. Right. It's not single tooth dentistry. It's a really nice community. Now we've trained up to a thousand dentists. Everyone's in the WhatsApp group, so they really feel like they're part of something. So there's always handholding on every single element after. So like the ignition starts with the first training course, but then after that all of the possibilities open up. And we're evolving all the time with the technology. So then they always want to be retrained or updated. So we're building a really nice community. Do you have like an entry course and then another course. And then they just go through the whole. Yeah, we've been running them for. This will be our fifth year or fourth year coming into the sixth year. And we know he's just we pushed the we've pushed it. It's also like initially we ran courses in football clubs. It's like soccer. You got your soccer. Football stadiums. Right? Robbie's very well known for treating like the highest, you know, top level footballers. Oh, yeah. So we thought, let's take it on the road and let's let's do the about football stadiums and call it away. Yeah. No one had ever done it before. So we were taking 40, 50 seats in the stadium in like, the manager's suite or in the big suite. And then we get to, we get to go on to the pitch. Yeah. And then I would DJ at the end. We'd have a little party vibe. So it was just it made a lot of noise. Yeah. Different. You want to disrupt the game and do something different. So we've gone through that journey and now we've kind of found what works, and we've sort of brought it back to like a three day, really intensive thing. And now we teach it smaller groups because we want to give more the hands on and more kind of attention patients on the courses as well. And we treat them like a clinical environment. Now is it your environment or your. It is. It's my yeah. In my in my clinic in Liverpool because we have the education space. We have the lab but everything is there. So we've gone from training maybe 40, 50 dentists in the stadium over one day to like a three day really intense 20 dentist course. But they get to see everything they learn over day one, day two, which a bit of hands on. Then day three we do live patients and everybody gets to see the workflows first hand because over the shoulder training is great, right where you can do all the theory, you can do everything, but until you see the clinician working and you can actually watch the workflow from start to finish, and that's because our workflows are the way they are. You can literally treat the patient in 2 or 3 hours, four hours. So you go through the prepping, scanning, the fitting everything. Yeah. And because, you know, our focus is yeah, yeah, our focus is comprehensive planning. Right. So if you know how to collect the right data on the first consultation visit, now you know how to communicate that data with a good lab and use great softwares and execute. Everything comes together. So you you do all that work on the back end well at the start and then you reverse engineer, which means the chair time for the patient. Is less and you can execute same data entry a lot of the time. Obviously the patient needs to be healthy and you need to do the stabilization point. But in theory the workflow is geared towards moving towards same data entry for sure. And you have some lab guy I was going to say lab who's doing the work and trying to get it done. It. No, no. Okay. So you actually have somebody in the course that's finished? Yeah, we have a big lab team. So then the lab is on site and everybody's involved, and then the dentist gets to see who's involved from the team when they're going to be using the lab. And he gets it. They just get to see everything from the back end first, and then trust the process to take away into their own clinics so they can actually use your lab. Yeah. So we support them 100% through the lab. After after the education, we have quite a comprehensive lab portal. So you upload everything onto the portal or the patient information, the communication between yourself and the lab. Then everything happens centrally and from our point of view. Then we can log into that at any time, see what's going on, see the the journey that the dentist is going through. And that will help. Yes. Continue to mentor them afterwards through the lab portal. So we have a team of educators who can do mentorship programs for these dentists. So our lab portal now recently. So originally it was obviously we manufacture everything in Liverpool and the portal access was only given once. You have been educated, right? But now we have a like a pay as you go model, which is a CAD design service only and that is a global platform. So you can you can log in and we can support any dentist anywhere in the world with, with CAD design service from, you know, from treatment plan and mock ups right through to final restorations, smile design rehabilitations, whatever. The whole design team. Whole design team. Yeah for sure. So have you ever trained a dentist and then they sent you work and you're like, no, I didn't teach you how to do that. Yeah, that's what I keep an eye on. I mean, to be fair. So we're going to let you go, you know, not so much that. But we are good at telling people, listen, maybe don't do this as your first case. Yeah. No, let's just build up to this one. That's smart. But you need that, right? You don't want to screw up your first case. Yeah. And actually you want the dentist to get the confidence and get their kind of hand rolling, right? So we do monitor that. And we even we even have that to say look before we even embark, just send us the case. We'll have a look, we'll eyeball it and say, yeah, this will be great. Or maybe let's not do this as your first one, right? So yeah, we do that. And because we we pride ourselves in the support and we know what it's like. You can do a course. Not to your patient. And then you forget it. Later, the motivation is gone. The momentum is gone. And then you're just. Yeah. And you get nervous again, right? So yeah, we want to get people in. Get them started and support them through that journey. And that's where the community afterwards like the group chats, like I said, because you might have 20 people on the course and five of those put the first case up and it engages the other to go, okay, I'm really going to go for it now. Like a trust, like I feel like this guy did. Exactly. Yeah. So or in case I need a little help, can somebody give me some advice? And sometimes even our previous delegates, now they're in the system. And this whole, like, experience before we even get a chance to jump on there. The previous delegates are giving advice and they're answering. So yeah, it's really nice. It really is a community that we do engage the whole dental office team because, you know, a lot of that involves getting the assistance of the nurses involved and all that. We have a course called The Ultimate Patient Journey, which is a 1 to 2 day course where the dentist comes with his TCO or his practice manager or his nurse, and we focus on that whole journey end to end, everything that matters about the business of the of the industry with regard to the customer journey. Apart from the clinical bit. Yeah, yeah. So it's it's where everybody in the team has a has a role to play. Yeah. And we say like everybody has a role to play. The importance of that role from answering the phone to being the concierge in the front of house to taking the photographs. Nobody can underestimate it because quite often the dentist doesn't even get a chance to do his high level execution because somebody dropped the ball beforehand. The first phone call. Exactly. Yeah. And they don't answer it at a high level. And the patient is like, yeah, yeah, I don't like the way you sound them out. Yeah, yeah. That's that. That full team training is one of the courses we do. And we highly recommend that course as well. So what we find is a dentist will come on and then the clinical take some back to his clinic to implement. And then he'll think I really want to implement my team into this now. And then he'll bring the team back. And that's another reason why we find it works now so well in Rob's clinic. Right. Because he's doing it day in, day out. So when you come into that environment and you can really see the workflow happening, it. Just again inspires you to take that away and, you know, put little nuggets of what you've learned into your own workflow in your own ecosystem. So yeah, that's super important as well. And we found that afterwards, because we were training all these dentists and then trying to think, what why is it not kicking off for them? And it's not even the dentistry bit like we just said. It's all the bits beforehand. So that's why we bought that. And we're constantly evolving the courses based on what we see our community needs because we see that. So initially we were doing the teeth, then we then we're getting cases coming through where there's implant requirements, right. We're like, okay, let's bring in the implant with the surgical like some some patients will need a bit of gum work first. So now we have the gum the course attached to it. Right. So you can really kind of learn everything you need to carry out that comprehensive work. Get together like once or twice a week after you're done. I mean I clinic I spent, I'm like an honorary a 24 hour day. I'm an honorary Liverpudlian now. Yes. I spend a lot of time up in Liverpool, you know, and I come back having absorbed the accent. I start speaking and the wife's like, why are you talking like this? I don't understand you. So. Yeah. So yeah, we spend we spend a lot of time together. But it's it's good and we have so much synergy. So it just kind of works. Right. You can tell that's amazing. Awesome. So what's the website? How can people find out more about it. Yeah. You can find out more about us on, um, Avant-Garde dentistry. Yep. Um sorry Dot. Co.Uk or on Instagram at Avant Garde Dentistry or at Avant Garde Laboratory. Nice. So yeah. Look us up. Um, as I say, we we we're trying to have a bit of a global presence If you want to use our lab services, we're here to help. We have some great designers on the team, including the wonderful Christina from Mexico who's been announced as a superhero this week. She's on your team. She's on our team. Yeah. So we have a we have a great set. So, Christina, vitality is on your team. That's right. Yeah. That's awesome. You got the best of the best. I don't want to say anything bad about anybody else, but Christina's amazing. Yeah, that's. Wow. Congratulations on that. That's cool. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, gentlemen. Thank you guys as well for having us on. Good stuff. It was really good hearing about it. Awesome. Thank you for the best. Leo brought you over to me and said you're the big guy on the line. I am one of the guys at the line. One of the guys on the line. I'm Zeljko Relic, I'm CTO at Align Technology. CTO yes. So what is that? Chief technical Officer. Chief Technology Officer wow, how long have you been with the line? I mean, my 12th year, 12th year. So tell me about your role. I'm supposed to make sure that we we we move in the right direction. Yeah, that we leverage all the technologies out there, that we develop our own technologies. Yeah. And make sure that we we serve our industry well. Sure. So we make a lot of investment in R&D. Oh yeah. I make over 300 million per year, 300 million per year. Aligners know a $300 million per year investment in technology innovation. That's how much you spend for how much you spend. Yes. Most of our innovations are multi-year projects. Sure, we need to make sure we make right bets and we deliver solutions. Technology that turns into solutions that matter to our doctors. And they're nice. Nice. So talk about your history. I mean, you obviously didn't walk into a line one day and they hire you because of your good looks. Well, yeah, probably not because of that. Well, you know, I my my background is in computer science. Oh, okay. I started my career in semiconductor business, but I semiconductor, uh, but I, I spent a good number of years in healthcare with Siemens. Siemens? Yes. I was in imaging, uh, ultrasound. And I was then in computer aided diagnostics, if you wish. Yeah. Um, knowledge based systems, a lot of digital technology and AI. And, yes, I had a chance to be, uh, contacted about the position at the line. I joined as as a VP of R&D, overseeing all of the R&D almost 12 years. So that long ago, I mean, they were a pretty big force back then, right? I mean, we were pretty big, but not not even close to being where we are today. Really we where we were much, much smaller. Because Aline is Invisalign, right? I mean, a line is Invisalign. Then we acquired it into so Invisalign. Our line was founded 27, 28 years ago with the idea of moving teeth with plastic and digital technology. They were the first. First. Wow. First and only. And nobody else believed in the ability. Gotta have brackets. Gotta have brackets. We started as an Invisalign company and then the entire business. Our scanner business was acquired in 2011. Okay, so it was a separate thing. There was a separate small company in Israel. Israel. And became became part of, uh, it was called Cadent. Yep. Uh, it became part of. Do you remember? Caden? Yeah. Yeah. So they were, uh, they were acquired in 2011. And then, uh, exactly five years ago, we acquired exo. So five years ago. Yes. Why? I mean, why exo card. Because we want to build a comprehensive dentistry solutions. Yeah. And we believe in a comprehensive approach to treating patients. Yep. So what I mean by that is. Many patients, especially adult patients like me, if they want to have a healthy and beautiful smile, it's usually going to be more than one thing. You can't get it with ortho alone. You can't get it with ortho alone. You cannot get it with prostate alone. So that's very true. So if I come as an adult patient that has a deep bite and has a certain tooth where I should get the treatment that I need, regardless if I go to an orthodontist or to a or to a general dentist. So we want to create a platform that allows interdisciplinary approach to treating patients to patient care, where we can leverage technology, we can leverage the best of orthodontics on the Invisalign side, the best on restorative world. On the Exochus side, powered by the Atara scanner comprehensive scanner and allow doctors to practice comprehensive dentistry with confidence and efficiency. That is brilliant. And Excel was was the great piece to ask. Obvious choice, obvious choice choice. So did Excel can become the software behind it or did that not change? No. The exit is a piece of behind that error. So we on the lateral we have released what we call a design suite. Yeah. Where doctors can use chair side restorative capabilities from Exochus for example. The other thing is we have a very good integration between the lateral scanner and we call it, um, a T-Rex, a card connector where the where the information is is transferred back and forth with a higher level of automation, less interaction and all that stuff. So we are trying to create efficiencies as much as possible. So if someone has an item scanner, that file that scan can go directly to a CAD lab. Straight up, no issues, no issues. And then the scanner unique advantage of a scanner is, is the near infrared technology where you can see inside the tooth tooth structure, not just the tooth surface. Yeah. That also goes automatically into extra CAD. And you can pull it up in exact software and see, in addition to the 3D model of the tooth, you can see a near infrared image of the tooth as well. Yeah. So Barb came running in. I just want to tell you. Hello. Pleasure. It's a good thing I'm a runner because I ran my whole. Wait here. I'm sorry. Sorry, sorry. No problem. Can you introduce yourself? What was your name again? Sorry. Thank you for coming. CTO of a line. Oh, I'm getting all the history of the line. Invisalign. We just had a doctor on earlier. Talk about your expanding palettes. Now with we are. That's crazy. Believable. We are, we are. How do you figure that out? So very, very young patients early on. Yeah. Ages six, seven, eight. Sometimes they have very narrow arches. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So you can expand those arches daintily. And we have a product that's called Invisalign first, which will shape the arch. But sometimes you need to do more. So a way to do that is through a rapid palatal expansion where you're expanding the palate. You're actually splitting the suture. Yeah. You're you're riding it and you're getting a it's it's a standard procedure. It's just just what it's called. Rapid. So how fast. Rapid. Because it's usually going to be uh, up to a month. Less than a month. So do you have to? Yes. Do you have to get them before a certain age? Do you get them when they're young? So it's usually, uh, from six to 7 to 8 maybe, maybe a little bit older. So that when, when they are growing. So you could either do a dental expansion if it's, if it's not a lot of expansion, if you need more, then you can do a rapid palatal expansion in combination with the dental expansion. So. So the traditional appliances are those fixed appliances that you have. You had the screw and the patient. Uh, the the parent has to turn the screw one rotation. And that, that expansion device. Yeah. I'm not going to call it like that, but it's, uh, it's a it's a it's a traditional device. And so every turn of the screw is about a quarter millimeter expansion of that of, of that fixed appliance. What we do with the Invisalign palatal expander, we have a removable appliance similar to aligners. That that every day or every other day, depending on the doctor, uh, prescription the the the child will take a new one and the new one will be, will be about a quarter millimeter wider. So it's so so that's where the rapid comes in. It's every day a little bit. So it's, it's it's expanding at the same rate as traditional but it's removable. It's very easy to place in. It's not fixed. You can take it out. You can you can. So it's it's same as as aligners versus braces. This is Invisalign palatal expander versus more of the traditional appliances. So is this a specialized doctor slash dentist that has to go to a course to learn how to use this? This is this is the device that orthodontists will use some pediatric doctors. This is something that they do. And if they are certified Invisalign providers, they can they can use this. So they go to courses and they learn how to do it. The doctors learn how to do it. And then every Invisalign provider is a certified Invisalign provider. Is it faster than the traditional key turn, or is it about the same? So the the the rate of the expansion is defined as a quarter millimeter. But what what we see that the efficacy of the appliance is much better because it's printed. It conforms to the to the anatomy of the patient. When you turn the screw, sometimes you don't turn it all the way sometimes and all these things so, so in terms of efficacy, it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's a more efficacious than, than the traditional. Yeah. Is it the same aligner material. No. It's different. Completely different. It's quite different material. Is it. We you need to have a material that has a proper material properties to do the function. In terms of aligners, you have to be able to produce a very, very light but constant force. Yeah. Over time, if you're wearing a liner for a week to two weeks, sure. You have to maintain the material properties, the elasticity, the modulus of the material to to over that period of time, and a lot of materials of the other clear liners will they they will lose that. They, they, they call it stress relaxation. When you stretch something, it doesn't really come back all the way. So. So when you stretch the aligner placing your own teeth, you want to have that force that that's that's created by deforming the aligner that that's maintained as much as possible the period of your time to two weeks. So, so for the aligner, you have a different type of biomechanical system from the palatal. That's why we let you smart people figure that out. Yeah. So obviously that's why we have it online. We have a lot of smart people. I was going to say on the material science, on the process science, you know, biomechanics, simulation, modeling and everything else. And you have to test it on actual patients. What is the beta period? Look. It's it's a it's a class two medical device. So it's it has a very, very rigorous process to on our side and also to be approved on the regulatory with the FDA and all the bodies, uh, around the world. But it's out. It's available. It is off. Yeah. It is interesting. Yes. But back to a regular Invisalign. You're still printing a bunch of models and sucking down over all these. That process still hasn't changed. That process still hasn't changed. We we use the material course metric, but it's a thermo forming, uh, process, and, uh. It's still the best material out there. If I dare to say the next generation of aligners will come out of the future. Fully printed, fully, directly printed without the mold. We've been working on it a long time now. Uh, we have developed our own formulation the same way we created SmartTrack. Uh, internally, we have an amazing material science team, so we are bringing a brand new chemistry, brand new material formulation, and we also are building a brand new printer. Wow. We announced the acquisition of, uh, of a company in Vienna, Austria, uh, cubic, two years ago. We have acquired that company. And they are they have built a technology printing technology that we think is the best suited for the material properties and the processes that we have developed for direct fabrication of aligners. How happy are you not to do models anymore? We are still we are still doing models, but we are looking forward to, uh, to go into the next the my mind. I have always pictured you got you your model printing must be made. If it is, and then what do you do with all these models? So, so we we we produce over 1 million parts per day. Wow. Is that a model and a liner? Yes. And each each one is a unique. So we are the largest 3D printing company in the world. Can you print them out? We print the models then determine for it. Yeah. So you have a whole technical team to that work. We have a technical city. We have we we have our own manufacturing facilities in, in in Mexico, in in Poland, in China. Uh, we have a large scale. So when you, when you're building 1 million unique parts in a day, the quality control you have to have is just, just amazing because every single part goes into a patient mouth and it's supposed to provide forces to move teeth predictably. So we we do have our recycling processes. Of course, you don't just dumping trash, you know. So so you can make a material can be repurposed and and we we look we we we try to be as environmentally friendly as I love that. But this process has limitations. So when we go to directly fabricated aligners, that's going to be one of the areas we addressed. But also you. We will not have the limitations of a thermo forming process. So when you're offering a sheet of plastic, you don't have the control of all of the geometry. So when you're printing the aligner, you can put more material in one area so you can put less. And all these things so, so the, the, the capabilities of the appliance will enormously improve because we can produce advanced geometries. We can now create the four systems that are actually not possible with the current or less treatment for people, less time because of better. We are always looking for less treatment, but we are thinking about better control, more predictable. Oh, nice. And and less refinement. Less refinement. Yeah, exactly. So so definitely we we we hope it's going to be. So what do you think that's going to happen next. Next year. Next five years. I can give you predictions. So we feel very good about where we are with the material science. We feel good about the printer, you know, for us. But how do you make a million of them a day? Exactly. You you got it. So for us, how do you scale that project? I was going to ask how you scale. So the scaling is, you know, we have to make sure you know, when when you when you create a brand new material, you start with grams, you go to kilos, and now you have to go to metric tons. So you need to get the economy scale on material production. You have to get the right cost position, and then you then create a brand new machine, a brand new printer. You have to make sure that all of them work 24 by seven. And so you never sleep. Correct. There is plenty of people that that work around the clock to make that happen. I wonder. But we are very excited about it. How do you get to a point as a, as a leader, to know that you have to build in another country to scale up? Like, how do you know? Do you have like a two year, three year, four year vision? We have visions in terms of technology, in terms of commercial, in terms of operations growth. You have to be able to anticipate the position yourself. And sometimes you you have to make decisions based on the knowledge that you have. You know, but but a lot of our decisions and investments are made for the long term. Yeah. In mind. Wow. All we hear is positive things. And we know liners are growing in the US where we're based like crazy. Everybody wants to get into that market. All labs do. It's a beautiful thing. And I think what the beauty as I was talking about comprehensive dentistry, the data says that 75% of people, 75% of all people have some type of malocclusion, which means they would benefit from a tooth alignment. 75. Three out of four. That's huge. And the data also says, and this is not my data, this is the industry data that about half of the prosthodontics procedures should start with tooth alignment. The problem is that patients don't want to wait. They want to get going. I don't I don't I you know, that is I hear it a lot. Yeah. But the patients. Don't know. They're not exactly the difference. Yeah, yeah. So the the tagline I'll give you is. Do you move or do you remove. Oh. So if, if you have a, if you have crowding and if you, if your teeth are crooked to get a nice looking smile you have to prep this teeth to get something. Yeah. Or even take one out. And so so when I say removing it's removing healthy tooth marks. If you, if you take it away enamel, you're reducing the life of the tooth. I agree. So if you can avoid removing of the tooth mass removal of the tooth mask by moving teeth, you're getting much better outcomes in terms of health, function, aesthetics, and longevity. So we believe by building a comprehensive digital dental platform that combines the best of Invisalign, the best of the best of it era. We will give doctors the ability to practice comprehensive dentistry with confidence and efficiency. And we believe that that patients will get their teeth moved a lot more than removed today. Well, that brings it back. Sorry. That brings it back to Exo cat in there. New art. That's exactly what we're doing. So in the art. So you are getting the best of Invisalign inside. Yeah. Those patients that say I don't want to wait. Be like, this is why you wait. Why? Yeah, because if you don't wait, you can only do this. And our experience is once the patients know the difference. Oh, yeah. They will make the right. They will say yes. They will make the right decision. Yeah. I was curious about the materials science and the materials. Do you think? Well, you probably already know that you'll get to a point where it's maybe every week that you change the aligner. Virtually every two. Currently, you're changing it every week. Really? Yes. You wore them, didn't you? Yeah, I was pretty. I needed a lot of movement. Yeah. So it's every week, so it's not so bad. Many, many years ago, our recommendation was two weeks ago. Two weeks. Uh, since probably more than five years. See, I did mine over five years ago. So. Because because we improved the, the the biomechanics and and for younger patients, some doctors use it even faster every five days or even really think we'll ever get to one day. It's actually not about the appliance. It's about biology. Yeah. You don't want to. You don't want it too fast. Moving too fast is not good. Yeah. So it has to be, uh, light force and moving slowly. Yeah. Did it hurt? It didn't hurt? No. I mean, it was uncomfortable that first day you put it in, but the very first day. Yeah. That's because you you're doing it for the first time, but not even 30 minutes later. You don't even really notice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I went through the whole thing and it was great. Yeah, it worked out. I know in America, it's really big for doctors to be platinum. I. Invisalign and all that. Do you do that all over the country or all over the world? Yes we do. Yes we do. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. What does it mean? Well, you know, the you basically have doctors who are higher tiers. Yeah. They do more. Yeah. Yeah. You see platinum, you know, they know what their highest metal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, they they can get better support, better service from us. And the more you do, the better it is. Yeah. Simple as that. Yeah. I bet more doctors are trying to get in it as we have. We have Invisalign doctors side. We're patients. We we we we also not only spend a lot of money on on technology innovation. We spend a lot of money on brand, on educating consumers about the value of our health. We saw your flags. So we so we bring a lot of patients to our doctor practices. So those who who who are really good doctors are on our doctor's side. Where, where, where a consumers can do a search and find a doctor. So we are driving a lot of patients to our, to our doctors because patients are more educated than they ever were. You go on the internet and you search what you're looking for, and you give them a doctor or a choice in their area. Absolutely. So we educate doctors and we connect them with good doctors who can who can deliver that quality of care. That's awesome. I mean, congratulations on inventing the. The brand of Invisalign that's become the common name for all clear aligners. It's become the Kleenex of the year. Yes. I mean, that's that's unique and not easy to do. Yeah, and you all killed it. I mean, thank you for bringing it to us. Well, we are very proud. And we continue, as I said, to invest a lot in technology innovation, not because we have too much money and don't know what to do with that. We want to be better because we want to be better. And we know there is so much more we can do to improve the quality of care, give our doctors the ability to leverage their experience and expertise. Yeah. Even better. I love it. Thank you. I love it. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Appreciate your pleasure talking to you. Thank you. So here we are. IDs 2025 day. Whatever. It's like 2084, I think. I don't know. Three. Three. Okay. Somebody told him that again. But, yes, we keep paying attention. Ben Webber is paying attention for model works. How are you, sir? I'm very well. It's a day three of the show. Absolutely. Running around and having loads of great, great talk. We've heard good things about you. So welcome. Yeah. So tell us your story. I mean, how did you end up here at IDs? Well, I'm from the UK and I moved to Germany more than ten years ago, and I've got a mechanical engineering background, so I never would have thought. You're one of the smart ones. I wish more people would say that. Um, and, uh, mainly because I'm on the business side and I'm not one of the geniuses who do the technology. Yeah, I never would have thought I needed mechanical engineers. Yeah, exactly. And to be honest, I work for a software company. I work for a software company which does manufacturing. So I'm an a mechanical engineer, so I never would have thought I'd be working for a software company. And secondly, I never would have thought I'd be at a dentistry show, you know? So how the hell did it happen? Well, the company I worked for, we, um, we've got the largest, uh, team of software developers for manufacturing software in the world. So? So basically, everything around you, like, whether it's cars or the most efficient planes in the air or even, you know, consumer electronics. Yeah, all of that stuff has to be manufactured. And like manufacturing, discrete manufacturing is 16% of the global GDP. 16 trillion. Huge. Because you all need the latest smartphones. And, you know, everything has to be manufactured. And the majority of that is actually machining metal. So like, you know, the cases of the iPhone, things have to be molded or whatever. And our company was set up, uh, more than 20 years ago basically developing modules. That's why we called module Works. I like the name. I said model work. Module module work. That makes all the difference now, right? Like model work. Yeah. And yeah, the great thing is I mean manufacturing huge. There's millions of millions of people out there globally making things. Yeah. And behind every, uh, plane or car or consumer electronics, there's people who are using software and hardware to do this. You know, they're using software and hardware. So it's the software running the machines that make everything that in the world. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And those companies which are making the software so we don't have our own software, we're a bit like, uh, Intel inside. Yeah. So all of those companies making the software, which the millions of people are using, they have our modules inside. Yeah. So, uh, so that's that's it. I mean, we're basically touched by our technology every day and even even the lenses on the iPhones. I mean, they're using our technology. So how did you guys get into dental or have you always been into dental? Um, we we got in around, I guess, 15 years ago. Because because you think about it, you know, you want to manufacture something. You need a CNC machine to mill something. And the companies out there who are doing this, it's like, okay, well, dental is no different. The parts look different. You call them indications, you know, but they have to be machined or nowadays 3D printed. Right. You know, you need the best technology to do that, so why not? Why not get the companies who've been serving manufacturing to come into digital dentistry and say, hey, well, we make the best cam software. Well, why don't we do it for digital dentistry? So that's that's how the journey started. Um, that's also when we started, uh, partnering with the organizations who were actually doing all the innovation. So, you know, the CAD companies, the machine companies, you know, they needed best in class technology because, you know, why reinvent the wheel? Uh, and that's how we got into the business. And in the first years when we got into the digital manufacturing aspect back then, there was this thing called the the indication race, and there were new indications which the design companies would design. But you have to manufacture it. Okay. Loads of loads of hard work. Um, and as an established organization, you've got the development team, you've got the people, the experts, and you get it done. So it was an exciting first five, ten years. And then nowadays, uh, the problem is kind of similar, but it's got more exciting because. So are you, like a founder who founded the company? Um, it's a chap called doctor. He's the founder of Module Works. He's the CEO of Module Works organization. Yeah. Uh, I run the digital dentistry business, and, uh, I mean, we've we've got maybe headcount of about 400, probably about 250, 300 software developers. So maybe I don't understand what is the module. Yeah, that's what I'm trying within the software. So this software already exists. And what's a module? A module is just something under the hood which does something which you typically don't see it. So it's a bit like a dental technician. Seriously. I mean it's a bit like, you know, you you make a you make a 3D printer print, you click print the same thing you do with Mills. You basically click mill. Yeah. And you don't see anything happen. It just does something. And then the machine just starts moving. Yeah. Like the stuff under the hood doing that calculation making. That's the model. The calculator kind of. Yeah yeah. All right. Now that makes more sense to me. It's basically what makes those machines move. Um, so the CAD software, is that what it is? No, it's between the two, I think. Yeah, yeah. Before them. Yeah. In the in the CAD software, you're basically designing something, right? And, you know, in the old days, uh, dental technicians, they'd make things with their hands. Yeah, right. They know exactly what it should be like to make things with the hands. Nowadays, they design the thing which they want in a software, like, uh, like hexagon. Yeah. And then that has to be manufactured in machines. So is it the Cam software? The Cam software is telling them if you want to do and that's what you do. We do a module for the Cam software between the two on top of a regular Cam software. You come in and it makes you do the thinking under the hood, which is under the hood. Yeah, I think I'm beginning to understand how this works. So what did you say? 60% of what we use has that earlier in the dental industry it's about 40% in in the global manufacturing is 90%. Yeah. Everything is machined. Yeah. Hardly anything is made by hand. That's true. So your roll is sorry. Go ahead. No. So your module in software is in every machine here. A lot of them. Not everyone, but a lot. A lot of them. Yeah. And I mean, I think I think you have to ask, well, what is what does that mean? What's the tangible results? I mean, the things which we established in the, in the first five, ten years is, you know, you want to make a crown out of something like Imax. Yeah, it's really hard. And people want to get it done quickly. And back in the old days it would take like an hour. You put something in a machine, you wait an hour. Yeah, it's very hard, you know. Nowadays you're getting that in ten minutes. So that's like all the stuff you have to do to to make the machine move in the right way. Just in order to get something like that. That's what software does. So you take a machine and make it faster, make it better, last longer. Does that all come into play? How do you figure this stuff out? I don't understand why. All of a sudden you figured out a way to make it run faster. But it was always there. You know, it used to look boxy. Yes, yes. Nowadays they don't, do they? They're all kind of curvy and weird thing. They're aerodynamic and they have to be light and safe. Yeah, well, it's a bit like in the old days when you wanted to manufacture things. The boxy. It was quite easy, you know, it's square. Yeah, but the second things around, it gets more complicated because you're telling a machine how to move it. And anatomic things are always obviously not square. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, a crown, a bridge, all those things like when you look at it. It's not the easiest geometry to make, you know. Imagine. Imagine. Imagine carving out of stone a cube. So an unskilled person, you could kind of spend a good few days and manage to get to a cube. Yeah. But imagine carving a bust. I mean, only a skilled sculptor can do that. That would take a while. Yeah. So that's a bit like the difference between manufacturing something which is simple. Manufacturing something which is complex. It's like a turbine. A turbine blade on a plane that's complex, very, very difficult. Our software does that. But for the simple things, your software does that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for every plane ride I've ever been on. He said most everything. That's behind the door. I've got to say, we can't take the credit. It's our partners, which are the ones which make these solutions usable by the by the end users. We're like Intel inside, right? You buy a laptop, you don't really know what Intel is doing in the background. It's just under the hood. I just I don't want to know. I just want it to do it. Exactly. So do you guys work with labs and doctors? We don't work directly with labs or doctors. We work directly with companies which are making software or companies which are making the machines. So, um, this, this company here, I'm a partner of ours, also a partner of XO cats. They've got these great sexy looking machines. Yeah. The machines are dancing around like milling Iron Man things out of. Yeah, yeah, just for fun. Yeah. It's our technology which is milling that. Okay. Yeah. So they piece it together. It's remarkable. Not really. I mean, it's not even about surviving. I mean, we started working with them more than ten years ago. They wanted to be ambitious and bring new technology into the market. They're the ones that started bringing, uh, you know, Emax crowns with one spindle, uh, which is such a low speed. And they needed, uh, they needed the technology, but they also needed a strong partner saying, okay, well, we've got a new machine. We want the best software with it. Well, let's work with us on it. So, yeah, typically our partners. We're part of that development team. We work with them for for years on end. Um, and that's how it is. You don't come to us and ask for something, and we give it to in your hand. You come to us for a partnership and we work with you for many years. Yeah, exactly. So we're in the US, and I know mailbox and Hyper Dent are big. Are they competitors or do you go? Are you part of them? We're a bit like them. So mailbox and hybrid and leading solutions. So if a lab wants a game they can pick one of these. Uh, some of the other machines have their own solutions. So you buy the machine, it's got everything included. Yeah. And we typically supply those types of companies. Interesting. Yeah. So they've kind of say, okay, well, for whatever reason, I want my own cam because I've got my own materials, I've got my own processes. Everything's validated. That's my business model. Yeah. So those companies tend to, uh, tend to work with. Okay. So you're almost like the OEM version. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. But we're only you can say that like a mailbox. And then they've got two parts of the software. We're like, where they've got the stuff under the hood and the stuff that you're seeing and using. We only tend to do the stuff under the hood, under the hood. And you let the mill company do the inner the user interface? Yeah, exactly. It also has a as a cam user interface. Some companies want to make their own. And and it's also like the companies which want to have their own software or their own tools or their own thing. It's part of their business concept, part of their USP, because they want to say, well, you know, I'm not just giving you a machine. You can just swap and buy. I'm giving you a solution. Yeah, I'm giving you a reason to to use my solutions so you can benefit from it. You know, there are a multitude of different benefits you would you could have by having a fully validated solution. Some people want it. Other people want freedom to just swap out things and go there. Go the customer. I mean, everybody's each to their own. So is there something that you're showing at the show that's new that you're launching? The company's launching? Yeah, I mean, we we've actually done a lot of focus in the last two years on identifying more about the main segments we're seeing requirements for. So we're basically we split it. We split up the technology sets into the three segments like restorative dentistry implants and orthodontics. Okay. Yeah. Because those three segments kind of have different requirements for manufacturing. Right. So in orthodontics it's all about clear aligners. So a lot of companies started manufacturing clear aligners in the last few years. Yeah yeah. And you have companies starting from scratch trying to manufacture them. And the process is, you know, thermo forming models. And then somewhere down the line you need to trim the excess bit of some of the trimmings. And that's the technology that we've been providing. That makes sense. Total sense to me because I was thinking like you said, it's the thinker. It's the it's the joiner, I guess. Yeah. Me too. We developed some new, uh, AI technology in order to help some bits of that. So one thing is like making the machine move the way you want. But in order to figure out how you want the machine to move the way you want, you need to figure out what the machine needs to do. We use AI to figure out what the machine should do. So imagine you got a clear line of arch, and typically it's scalloped along with the gingival margin. Exactly. That is the bit you want to cut, but sometimes you don't have that line. And our AI technology reads it. It takes the model and figures out the best line and then puts it on to the clear. And then you can put it, you can put it onto a laser or a milling machine, and it can just trim the line. Interesting. What about implants? What do you do with that? One of the main things in in the implant area is having really, really high quality precision. And also typically the manufacturer is a huge manufacturing facility. So they're doing like millions and millions on, on really expensive machinery. Like every single second counts and the precision counts, it has to be so accurate because if you if you don't have high precision manufactured fit, yeah, it won't just fit. It just jeopardizes the whole treatment. And because because that's a bit of a different ballpark, because you have big manufacturers in that space. They invest heavily in their own R&D in their own machines. I mean, they don't they don't look for the cheapest machine. They look for the ones which are robust. You can handle this huge volume and everything counts, like the precision counts how much you're you're spending on tools to machine the things counts because you want to be profitable, right? And consistency is important. You need to make sure that millions and millions of. Of these indications have exactly the same quality. You can't you can't sacrifice some issue here in some segments like restrictive. Maybe I'm not an expert, but you know, at the end of the day, a dentist can maybe do a lot. If the manufactured crown isn't that great, you know. Whereas in ontology, you know, you don't. It's either yes or no. Yeah, exactly. That's why I like it. Because it either goes or it doesn't. Yeah. And you got to figure out why. And the one, the one thing about these three segments is they've all got their own challenges. They all kind of can benefit from our underlying tech. But all of these areas, they're kind of suffering from the same problems everybody has like shortage of labor or, you know, the shift in the geopolitical situation. Or like smaller companies having difficulty to stay in business, larger organizations being very, very aggressive in, uh, in providing solutions to everybody. So it's a difficult space generally. And, uh, the shortage of labor is the one thing which we've been working at trying to trying to address because the. Yeah, yeah. What were you going to say? The more the less people, the more technology's got to help us. Yeah. I mean, the more more you can automate what everybody needs to do, the more and more you can leverage the best of everybody and the time they have. Right. Yeah. And the one thing we did to get to the 90% of the global manufacturing market is we basically developed. Like, it's a bit like developing rocket science tech, but then saying, hey, we developed it once. Not everybody should develop it. We give the whole market the ability to come to us and to license and to take those modules. So you don't have 100 companies having to develop the same thing. You've got one company. We've got a big development team focusing on just that, and anybody can have it. It's just give it out. No, no no, we sell it. We sell it. But it's, you know, it's it's it's more cost effective to come to us and to pay us a license rather than having to create 50 developers, which you have on your payroll just to develop that thing, which we're good at doing. So why? You know, everybody's got what they are good at doing to do so. The boring hard work in this very narrowly focused area, we say, okay, we'll do it. And it scales of economy. So are there even other companies doing this or there's no other company doing this as a as a modular thing? Yeah. So interesting. This company is developing something similar to us. All of our partners actually develop something similar to what we're doing is we typically develop certain aspects of the complex bits and other bits they probably developed even before we existed. But when it got to this five axis thing, or when it gets to robotics or other things that we're like, okay, let's see a little help. Yeah. You know, I'm done. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it costs a lot of money to have software developers. The cost of software developers has increased drastically. Oh, yeah. I think it's a lot of money, and it's big tech. I mean, everybody wants to work in big tech. The salaries are huge. You know, 20 years ago, all these companies which are making these innovative, innovative solutions, they had software developers. And like nowadays just keeping software developers as expensive like like newbies. I mean, graduates, they want to work at the big tech companies. They don't want to work for some company you've never heard of doing, like some engineering software. They come out expecting a lot of money and a good lifestyle. Yeah, well, that's because they're very smart. Yeah. Super needed obviously. It's so interesting. So, like. Pretty much anything that's manufactured. Your company is kind of 90%. How do you get into every single segment of the world? Be the only one. I mean, like, that's the one big thing is we we don't sell our technology directly to end users who buy it. I mean, that means we save a lot of money. You know, it's so there's millions of people using the software. We work with hundreds. Okay. And then those are the guys. Okay. That makes sense to me. And, uh, and and it's it's it's efficient because, I mean, we develop what we're really good at doing, and we've been doing it for 20 years. And what we've developed so far, we call it, um, 2000 person years of development. That means if you needed to develop what we're doing, you get one person to take them 2000 years to get to where we are. And every year increases by another 250, 300. Right. Because we're just doing that. We're not doing like web design. We're not doing like cloud infrastructure. We're just doing this like rocket science bit here. Just one thing. Yeah. And the thing is, this rocket science thing here is it's nothing on its own. You need somebody to take it and say, okay, this is going to go into my thing. My thing is for that and that and that, because those people need the best solution. I know exactly what they need. I can every year. I can give them a better release because they want to make turbine blades. They want to make iPhone lenses, they want to make laptop cases or whatever, or or digital dentistry. So they know exactly what they want to do. And we, we like to work with the ones who are innovating and we say, hey, how can we help you? They say, well, does this fit? So we need that bit from you. We say okay, what size, what shape, what special things do you need? And we spend the next year or two working with them building it. Yeah. I mean we build our bit, we help them. Sometimes we help them close it. Sometimes we just give them a bit and they're happy. Uh, and, uh, and they solved the problem, right. But without a strong partnership with our company, we're nothing. Yeah. And without a nice host around what we've got. Right. It's also nothing. So, uh, our success is is basically built on technology we've developed, but more importantly, the strong partnerships. Yeah. Do you think your company is in every company that's in this ideas? No, no, I mean no. I mean, firstly the the maybe a part of it. I mean, your module probably did something for every one of these companies, right? I mean, we've definitely developed technology which is also making machines. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So in some way it could be 90%. So maybe 90% of ideas. That's that's a huge compliment. That's very fascinating. I don't think we've ever heard anything like it. Nothing. And it took us about 15 minutes to wrap our heads. I wrap my head around. Exactly. But but to to be fair to the other players in the in the digital dentistry, it's like 4,040% of the of the manufacturers. I got you so fascinating, Ben. Thank you so much for coming on. Interesting. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you very much. Enjoy your meeting. Obviously. Amazing. Yep. A huge thanks to everybody who stopped by to chat with us in the expo card booth at the RDS 2025. It was great to meet Doctor and Doctor Hughes. And we appreciate you teaching the dentist the proper way to use digital dentistry and for also including us, the labs in the equation. I'll tell you what. A line had a massive, massive setup right next to us. Also, great to learn more about a line and how much they put into making sure that they stay leaders in digital. While we thank XO CAD a lot for all they have done to get us to Germany. We also need to thank Aline too for this opportunity. It was a great opportunity. And thanks to Zeljko for telling us more about the company and if there is anyone doing the hard work that goes unappreciated to the point of not even knowing about it, and we thank Ben Weber and all that module work does to keep our machines running, even though hopefully Elvis finally got it. I don't know if I do. We might need to have him back on, get a full hour to figure out what's going on with all of this. All right, everybody. Barb. My God. Go back to bed. Thank you. Oh, wow. And, uh, of course, everybody will talk to you this week. Yeah. Oh, my. God, I'm sucking. And if there is anyone doing. 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.