Hi Voices of the Bench community. This is John Isherwood with the PR team here at Ivoclar. As we wind down the year, all of us at Ivoclar want to thank you for your partnership, your trust, and your continued support. We wish you and your family a very happy, healthy, and safe holiday season. I'd also like to take a moment to thank Elvis and Barb for continuing to make this podcast so special, bringing our community together to share ideas, learn from one another, and grow as a profession. From all of us at Ivoclar, have a wonderful holiday season. And as Santa likes to say, May your days be merry, your nights be bright, and may all your smiles sparkle like freshly fallen snow. Ho, ho, ho.
Welcome to Voices from the Bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an e-mail at info at voicesfromthebench.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Good morning, hello, and greetings to episode 404 of Voices from the Bench. My name is Elvis.
My name's Barbara. I don't think I've ever heard you say good morning and hello, but good morning and hello.
Yeah.
Merry Christmas. Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve week?
Yes, Not quite Eve, officially, but we are starting the week of Christmas. How are you?
I'm good. I stayed home last night because my boyfriend had his son and his son's friend over. So I ate a whole pizza. A whole pizza.
Yeah, I've done that, been there many times.
One of us is gonna go run for about 5 hours today.
I'm definitely gonna go for a run. It's the first time it isn't like below 20.
Oh God, we always talk about that. How cold is it?
Let's see, I think it's... that's doable. Yeah, but by 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 40s.
Oh, are you gonna have a white Christmas or do you know yet? Because it is Christmas week, guys. It's in a couple days.
I think we're supposed to have a rainy Christmas. Oh, well, ****. I would prefer a nice running Christmas.
I was gonna say, you're not really putting up a tree or anything. Are you a Christmas kind of guy or no? Because you know I am.
Not at all. I don't have a single Christmas thing up.
Do you not have a single Christmas bone in your body or do you just not like decorating?
Yes.
Okay.
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, really, I could give it or take it. is what it is.
Fair enough. Well, I'm sure if you have a certain, you know, somebody that you're going to get a gift for, do you do that?
So let's see, parents get gift cards. Every other one I'm related to, I'm going to walk in with $20 bills and just be like, here you go.
Well, that's smart.
Yeah. I don't know what these want. I don't know what a 16-year-old girl wants.
She wants money. So that's perfect. See? Good job. See, you got it going on. All right, you passed the Barb test. You passed.
I mean, I'm not making fudge or nothing, but.
I'm making white chocolate fudge today with Oreo cookies. So Oreo cookie fudge. and it is bomb diggity. Last week I made regular fudge and I got honey baked hams for everybody and we had a really nice lunch at work. So do you know how much honey baked hams are now?
I'm gonna go with like 80 bucks.
Oh man, they're about 120 each now.
Holy.
Yeah.
You bought enough for 100 people.
No, I bought three and two of the roasted turkey breasts. And then everybody else brought the fixings. And it was really cool. I'm trying to bring a little bit of community and love back into the lab now that I've taken back over. And those are the things my dad used to do and I used to do back when. So it was good.
It's all about.
I hope he appreciated it.
What's the buzzword these days?
Food is love.
No, but. Not community.
It'll come to you.
Culture. It's all about culture in the lab. Yes, that's what it's all about. And if food works, food's it.
Yes, sir.
How's everything in the lab? You crazy busy? Is it slow for you? What's the vibe?
The vibe is I am. very busy. I don't think I ever tell you I'm not busy, but it's not as busy as it's been in the past Christmas past. And I've heard that from several people, which is really weird.
Yeah, I get that from the whole industry. It's not as crazy end of the year as it should be, and it's kind of weird. But hey, I guess we're just appreciative of what we're getting, I guess. I mean, yep. What's the schedule? You closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. Do you have to go back to work that Friday after?
Yeah, isn't that screwed up? You get off. It's nice to have Christmas Eve off because we never did in the past. So you've got two full days and then you go back to work. So for one day. Yeah, the majority of the people that could are just going to work ahead and take Friday off. But of course, I'm always there. So I'll be there. Same with the next week. So yeah. It's nice to have two days off, and I'm going to be making fudge all day today. We had a nice company lunch, and I wear bells, and I like it. I'm not as Christmassy as I normally am, because it's been a little more stressful this year, but still... I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas out there.
We have to also mention that if you don't celebrate Christmas, enjoy your random days off. I mean, I mean, I don't know what it is. Yeah, I don't know what everyone celebrates, but enjoy the time off.
You know it.
So this week we are bringing two more conversations that I got while at the NOLA Labfest when I was set up with the good people at Adite North America.
Nice.
I gotta say, if you're looking for any equipment or material, make sure you check them out for some good products, good pricing, and what's really important, they have amazing support. So thank you, Adite.
Thank you, Adite. I'm sorry I wasn't there, but you guys are amazing.
So first up is Rick Jacobs that comes to New Orleans all the way from the Netherlands. Rick is not a newbie into 3D printing, as most of them know him from his time with Nextent. But now, Him and some really smart people. Rick is with Novenda.
Nice name, I like that name.
It's a good name. Where they have created the first multi-color but multi-material printer. This is so new that there's only one that they've made and they're looking for labs that want to get in on this amazing technology. Think about it everybody. Hard soft guards that they're actually hard soft. Or what I got into, dentures where the teeth and base can be different materials, but you can actually print in a integrated soft liner.
That's crazy weird.
This is some pretty cool.
And then Elvis gets to talk to past guests that comes back to talk about the exciting opportunity that turned her into a lab owner. Yay her, go Jess. So Jess Gray was working at Aspen when she connected with a dentist that was looking to grow. He gave her free run to build it up, and she started in a tiny room in the office to a separate building with other technicians. She talks about the process of working with a small DSO, teaching herself exocad, that's really brilliant, getting technology, and learning all on X along with a dentist. So join us as we chat with Rick Jacobs and Jess Gray.
So Barb, Cam has been a big topic for us in the past few weeks, and now that we're such experts on this matter, I actually recently learned about an exciting new partnership.
Oh yeah? What's that, Mr. Cam expert.
Well, you don't have to be * **** ***** it, but... Everybody knows our good friends at Ivoclar.
Yes, of course we do.
Yep, good people. And they probably also know about their Ivotion dental solution.
Do you mean the one where the discs are already split into two colors so that you can design and mill a complete denture all in one shot?
Yeah, it's crazy how that works. Don't know how it works, but you're right. That is it. There's no bonding of the teeth to the denture base.
Well, I bet that makes everybody life easier including mine what a goopy mess that that can be.
You betcha so until now you can only mill Ivotion dentures on a closed system however Ivoclar has been working with follow me Technologies to implement the workflow into hyperdent cam wow that means you'll be seeing it on a lot more open machines.
All right, so give it up. That's amazing. But do tell. Do you know which ones?
Well, I know for starters, we're going to see it on the Roland DWX 53 series mills, which a lot of people have.
Yep.
And the Imagine I mills.
So that is crazy awesome. These Hyperdent dudes are everywhere, right?
I mean, not just everywhere, but everywhere. They're like PMMA chips stuck to my...
Oh, we got it. Hard stop. Nobody wants the mental picture you're about to paint for us.
Voices from the bench. The interview. Take 2. Here we are at Nola Labfest, the first day. Thank you to Adite, the great people that are sponsoring us here. A gentleman came up to me and says he's got a 3D printer that can not only print in different colors, but different materials. I love this idea. Rick Jacobs, how are you, sir?
Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me to make a podcast together.
Yeah.
Probably a lot of people here in the US know me because I was Was the original founder of Nextent, and did a lot of business development here in the US. Nextent was sold in 2017 to 3D systems, and for a couple of years now I worked together with a great team of engineers and chemists. In the Netherlands. In the Netherlands.
Awesome to me.
To work on an ideal printer where the dental technical market is waiting for.
Yeah.
And that is a printer who is able to print at the same time multi-material and multi-color applications.
That's just fascinating to me because we have printers out there that do the color, sort of. Yep.
They do.
But the problem is, is we have so many devices we're wanting to print now, dentures being the biggest thing where we want those teeth and we want the base and we want to do it all at once.
Yeah, exactly. In strong materials, high impact, ISO standard on the one hand. On the other hand, extremely aesthetic, translucent teeth with mammalon, with different natural layers. That all is now possible. And besides that, it's even possible to print at the same time a pink, hard base, even harder tooth, plus, for instance, a soft liner on top on it.
This is extremely fascinating to me because we actually lost our first recording and we were just getting into this and I was super nerded out on this because The possibility of printing a denture with a soft liner part of it, not bonded to it, not adhered to it, part of it, day of delivery.
Exactly.
I can't imagine the undercut you're able to grab with this thing.
And also we invented a gradient so that it is not a soft liner on top of it, but integrated in the hard acrylic. And the way we did that is we have different jet heads. We have in total different materials. And with the yellow, magenta, and the cyan, we can make any color we would like to. And the combination of all of that makes it able to build an object drop-wise, drop after drop, with some water-soluble support material in a way that you can create any kind of material and color on a foxhole basis. So imagine you have a design, and you have it in pixels. The software, the CAM software, is able to transfer 2D pixel into a 3D voxel to get the best aesthetic result you would like to have.
Okay, let's go with an example here. So you designed something, let's say Exocad. The color in Exocad can be duplicated. How do you tell it, I want this to be A2? How do I get that to the printer to say it's A2?
By a lot of work, by our software engineers, our hardware engineers, and by our chemists. A lot of these talents from this company were having a lot of experience from the 2D printing. Inkjet printers from the inkjet, yeah, and with inkjet it was able to make any kind of color you would like to, and in dental it's not that difficult, so the pink base is, what is it, four, five, six different colors.
Yeah, but you usually need four or five different resins.
Yeah, and now we used the software to be able to... to mix the colors in such a way that you really have an A3 vitae color, exactly like the shape guide.
Wow, yeah.
Of course, that was six years of hard work, day and night, but it's possible.
Let me see if I get this straight. Let's say you're printing dentures. On the same plate, using the same... Do you still call it resin?
Ink, we call it ink.
Okay, the same ink. You're able to print different colors on the same plate with only using one ink because the colors are added to it during print.
Yeah, so we have a yellow, we have a magenta, and we have a cyan ink.
Just like an inkjet printer.
Exactly like that. And then the printer knows exactly by the design How he has to mix and how he has to print geometrically, but also aesthetically based on the input, and it was developed and designed in a way. on that you can print on the foxhole base with a tiny small little droplet.
Interesting.
Without rollers, without scrapers. So the quality of the output is also very high in terms of surface. Very smooth, meaning that you save a lot of time in the post-processing.
Because it doesn't use supports. It's kind of wrapped in, what do you say, like a wax.
A water-soluble wax.
Just wash it off.
You just wash it off. And you put it in an oven for, let's say, around an hour, all those jobs. And then the wax is melted away and can be washed away by just using normal tap water.
What is the oven doing?
Is it tightening the molecule? Yeah, it's the final curing in combination with melting the wax. Yeah, it's always a step which is needed for any kind of print technology.
Yeah.
What would happen if you didn't put it in the oven? The material characteristics will not be 100% perfect.
Interesting.
So you have to do that. It's also part of the IFU. It's part of the certification and the registration. And it's very important that people do that according to the instructions from the manufacturer. But I mean, just.
Washing it off and putting it in an oven is so much better than all that alcohol we use. What do we do with this alcohol? It's so gross.
But also for the employers.
Oh yeah, breathing that stuff in.
It's not good. No. So watching carefully and listening to thousands of technicians and lab owners, we really understand what they want and what they need. And yeah, we worked. hard to make that happen and to bring this innovative solution next year to the US market.
Yeah, so it's not even here yet. No, it's okay. There's not a single lab that has this thing. No. Someone's going to be the first, and someone's going to kill it with doing these things.
Exactly. We have a lot of interest.
I would imagine.
I have to say that it is a large production printer. So the size of the printer is not tabletop. It's not tabletop. It's comparable with laser melting, laser metal printers.
Yeah, those things are big.
These kinds of sizes, these kinds of prices also. However, it's a very productive and efficient printer. You can print 32 night guards in only 2 1/2 hours. Hard from the outside, soft from the inside. So the hard soft night guard from next year will be printed in one run, almost no post-processing, 32 every 2 1/2 hours. So you can print hundreds a day in a super efficient, effective way.
And I imagine even the old hard soft night guards we did. There was peeling problems. That probably doesn't happen.
No, because the Voxelizer, our CAM software, can also print it with a gradient, meaning that tiny little foxhole droplets, hard and soft, will gradually transfer from the hard to the soft material.
It's not a line.
You don't see it. It's possible to delaminate.
That's amazing.
Because it's integrated. So, there is no technology available in the world bringing this.
How do you figure it out? Do you just have a dream or something one day, and you're like, Yeah, we just listen, and this is what we want?
And putting the right people together, bringing the right people together. And then in the end, the magic will happen.
Yeah. And something I've learned on this podcast over the years is about memory shape. So when you take those flat sheets of those hard soft and then you suck them down, the material always wants to go back to its natural shape of flat. These things must just be rock solid, better. Less movement.
Yeah, I think a lab who is going to buy our solution can increase its market share enormously.
Yeah, I can't imagine what you're going to do in the ortho space.
Yeah, exactly. Because you can also convince doctors way better now that the hard soft night guard, for instance, is the best solution for the patient. Affordable, economic. the highest possible quality available.
Well, let's just be honest, we all like to make those because they seat better. There's nothing worse than a hard night guard.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then the denture, we print 32 dentures in only five hours. So if you have day-night production, you're talking about 150 per day.
That's a lot of dentures.
Very aesthetic. And imagine you have a lap and you want to convince doctors, offering them your signature denture, using very, very aesthetic colors, gradients, mamalons, translucency, all printed in one run, 150, 160 a day, predictable. effective.
So are you able to map someone's tissue with that color?
Yeah, possible as well, because there are no limits here. And what I would advocate and what I'm explaining here at the show to large lab owners is to work together with us to create the best possible aesthetics in terms of colorization. and try to make a standard or a benchmark in the market with that and conquer market share.
It's going to be so fascinating. What about final crowns and that kind of thing?
So it's still an ink. It's not a ceramic.
Which is like the reason why insurance or something I hear is like it has to be a certain percentage of ceramics or you just need that for the hardness.
You need it for the hardness because the natural tooth is also. Very hard, actually. We have to do something in the future as well, so let us work on that. Yeah, But we will launch it first for the full denture and the hearts of nightguards. But imagine what could happen in the future. Aligners.
Aligners would be huge.
Partial dentures.
Full arch hybrids. Fully colored. Yeah.
That's a game. I think the sky is the limit.
Yeah.
But those two applications will be the primary focus. We know how large the denture market is.
Oh yeah, sure.
And currently they are bonding the teeth with the base, or they are still pressing, or they are pouring. And with this technology, you have the solution, a lap.
What I love is there's no supports. Those little nubs. I mean, you spend so much time getting rid of them. Or bars.
To prevent warpage, all that kind of stuff is now needed here.
That's amazing. I mean, that just saves a ton of time right there, and you can never get rid of all of them all the time. I mean, it just takes so much work to get them out. It's nice.
Yeah, and we know that dental technicians are hard to find nowadays, denture technicians. So there is an urgent need for a solution like this. And we see consolidation in the market as well. We see centralized production. Yeah, that's where we offered our solutions specifically for those. centralized large production entities to become predictable, effective, and let them grow their market share together with this. That's the purpose.
What's the name of this printer?
It's the Novenda. Novenda Technologies. And the printer is the 100.
Just getting started with the one.
Yeah, just started with one printer. We are aiming for the large production, centralized production centers. And when new models will come out, we will think about funny names. But for now, let's brand November in the market first, so that everybody starts talking about November technologies from the Netherlands. A great solution.
So is it out in the Netherlands being used here?
No, so Kura, at this moment we are finalizing our demo printer. It's the first printer. We were convinced that it's very important for labs to see it with their own eyes, to experience the quality and to see the productivity. So we invite technical CTOs, CEOs to come over to Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to see the printer, to experience with their own designs, stuff like that. Wow. And then we can talk about a business model together. Currently, we are open for any kind of business model.
Interesting.
You can think about lease, you can think about paper printed part or you can buy it if that is effective for you. Everything is still open and then we can discuss about how many yet hats you would like to have. Are you only going to print hearts of night guards? Then we can.
So you can customize it.
I can customize the printer towards the specific needs of the customer.
So how many of these things are built? Just one.
At this moment, one.
That's fascinating. We're really early into this. Yeah.
And based on the feedback from the market here, the Chicago show in February, the visits we will get from the large labs, we will start up serial production.
Are you going to drag this big printer to Chicago?
No. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's too, he's too large.
Yeah.
But we will...
You gave it a gender.
It's too large. Yeah, But we will make some very, very cool movies, which we will play all the day. I will give personally lectures in Chicago, in a lecture room for Nowak. Everybody who's interested to hear technical details, to hear about all the possibilities of these highly innovative new... Disruptive solution, I would call it, are welcome to that's fascinating to listen to me in Chicago.
And I imagine you got a lot of labs like, Gimme, gimme, gimme, just like ready to go.
Yeah, I want to be the first, yeah, so let's see. We would like to sell as much as possible, but first the first one is first.
Yeah. It's going to be, you know, there's going to be some troubleshooting. There's going to be some experimentation. I can only imagine how great this thing's going to get.
Yeah, sure, but we are pretty convinced that we have a very high qualitative, effective production printer developed in according to the needs.
Yeah.
Uptime, our aim is 98%. Nice. So only surface moments. And for the rest, this machine should print like a production printer.
Yeah. Well, it's not like you're new to printing. So I think with your experience in previous printing companies, I think you can trust what you're putting out there.
Yeah, we have to. And there is no other way. It has to be perfect.
Yeah. I'm excited to see where this thing goes. Because I think being able to customize the colors and materials is the next step for this. I mean, you're doing what no other printer does. Exactly. It's fascinating. Rick, thank you so much, man.
No, thank you for this opportunity.
Novenda technology. Novenda technology. And I'll make sure to put a link up so people can check out the printer.
Exactly.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good one. This is exciting. Here we are at Lab Fest. Yes. Noak Lab Fest, NOLA.
I've never been down here.
Never been to New Orleans? No. First time. Did you have fun?
Absolutely.
Yeah. What'd you do last night?
Just a riverboat cruise. Then came back and went to bed.
Wasn't that fantastic?
It was though. It was beautiful.
Yeah.
It was very cool.
So I'm talking to Jess.
So it's gray now. I got married. Last time we talked, it was Meszewski.
I prefer gray. It's easier.
Way, way easier.
I do remember your last name now.
Got married in August.
Oh, congratulations.
Thank you.
So we talked, we just, we determined at a Chicago lab day about three years, four years.
Three years ago, maybe.
I don't do research, so we didn't look it up.
One of the cold ones, because somebody told me the other day, remember last year, this past year was cold, the year before it was like warm. It was the really frigid one we talked at. That's all I remember.
That was about three years ago. That was very cold.
That was like when I found out about the underground tunnels and I tried to walk back as far as I could underground because holy.
Yes. Once you determine the underground tunnels, it's a game changer. Yeah. It's scary down there, but it's good.
So if anybody doesn't know about the tunnels, find the tunnels.
Yes. So, okay, so last time we talked, Aspen.
Yeah.
You're at Aspen.
For seven years.
Seven years, just doing analog, right?
Yeah, because I started as a PSR at Aspen.
What's a PSR?
The patient service representative at the front desk, answering phones, scheduling appointments.
Why don't they just call that the front desk?
I don't know. They're fancy. They'd be fancy.
Yeah, everybody needs an acronym.
They were losing their lab tech and I was like, hey, how do you even do that? And then they put me through like a bench test and put me up against a couple other people. And I had to make a bite block on the spot. Never even heard of this business or what a bite block was as far as other than scheduling. And they accepted me into the training program, kind of hopped around. My doctor there at the time had seven offices. So I got to train with a lot of Aspen technicians.
Yeah, you'll learn a lot.
Yep, and then kind of left there eventually and got with Finger Lakes Dental Lab, which.
Is- So how long after we talked last did you leave Aspen?
I think it was like 8 months, nine months. I had just taken over and I kind of.
Remember you whispering to me after the fact that you're like, I'm thinking about doing my own thing?
Well, I'd like to. I'm working towards the CDT. I'm actually in the program right now with Allie Williamson.
Oh, nice.
Technology training in the study group, so, absolutely, hopefully CDT coming soon, you'll get it. I'm working for it, you'll get it, working hard.
Okay, so you left Aspen?
Yep, so then I went to Finger Lakes Dental Care, and at that time he brought me in, he wasn't even making dentures in-house. And I was in a little hygiene operatory type thing, started making dentures and stuff there. And then it was kind of doing so well, and the doctors were so happy. He started buying other practices. He started a second, like an LLC, Finger Lakes Dental Lab, LLC.
Okay.
Put me in charge of it, bought me a building, moved me around the corner, and...
Okay, let's slow down. This Dr. was not doing any lab work in his office.
No, he was doing retainers. Just like night guards and like, yeah.
Which a lot of offices do. What was his motivation to bring this in-house? Like just meeting you and like an opportunity or did he?
He had been looking, I guess, for a while. He had a lab tech like years passed, but then as he started kind of growing and bringing on more doctors, the lab tech retired or left or whatever the circumstance was, and he wasn't able to find another qualified technician like most of us can't right now. When he brought me in, he just didn't realize what it could be. And then when I just started talking to him about digital and 3D printering and I like analog, but I want to learn more, I want to do more.
So you came in, what did he give you a little closet space?
Yeah, it was literally a hygiene operatory that they took the chair out of. It was like as wide as your table right here.
And you were just doing pack and press.
He was doing cold pour dentures. Like that's what he, and I was like, no, We do those for economy, but that's all we do. So the very first purchase we made was an Ivo-based machine.
Nice.
And we immediately started injecting all of our dentures. Nice, Because I had the experience to do that. I was like, you know, I don't need the training. I don't need it. Just get me the machine and I'll do the rest. Don't worry.
Nice. He really had a lot of faith in you to buy this.
He really did. He really did. So that was the first thing we got was He did have one Sprint Ray 55 and not when he was doing his because he was printing models, his assistant was, and doing suck downs and doing 3D printed night guards. And that was it. That was the extent. So I did have the 55 in there already.
So when you came in, it was just one practice? Or did he have a couple?
He had three.
Three. And all associates and all the removable work came to you. How was it? I mean, were they sending good records? Were you having to reteach these doctors?
That was a challenge at first when I first got there. Not all of the assistants really liked me very much because they were, what I got a lot was, when we send a so-and-so lab, they don't care. They don't care. Like these impressions are fine or these models are fine. And then when I'm like teaching them, no, like I really want a base on it. You really, you know, see that retro molar pad you just cut off? Like I really, I really needed that.
I love that. Yeah.
And kind of like going through. He was really receptive to it and he let me actually do like trainings with the assistants and teach him how to and I got like a Twister mixer and taught him actually how to like a mixer a stone mixer.
What are you doing pouring models?
Well teaching the assistants to pour models with the proper ratio and like how to put a base on them and how to capture.
They weren't like measuring the water in the stone. Not at all, no. Using tap water or that kind.
All the things, the amount of bubbles and, no bases, no nothing.
So, you didn't take over pouring the model since it was all right there, or?
I did like a little bit, but I really just taught them, coached them up, because.
Let them do the dirty work.
Yeah, kind of. I was like, I'll go set the teeth or do the repairs or you go ahead and pour that. So I did all the trimming for a long time because they were just buzzing everything off on the trimmer. And when I did teach them how to pour, they were trying to trim themselves and then they'd take it all right back. I'm like, guys.
Yeah, but they probably stopped over pouring a model where it had like a six inch base around it just because that's how you get them from the office. Yes. Were you working with patients at Aspen, and you were able to do this at this new office? Like, are they bringing you in to see them?
For the wax try-ins and things I was.
Okay, perfect.
So at Aspen, I kind of did a little bit of everything, like co-softening, adjusting, repairing, wax try-in, sometimes delivering dentures, locator housing pickups.
Oh, wow.
You know.
Okay.
So in this, when I moved to Finger Lakes, I tried to only go in for the wax try-ins, and I did help a lot with the locator pickups, yeah, and teaching them proper locator height.
So you're going to each office to do this?
Yeah, I had actually I had a and I did hard relines and stuff too, like in the offices, so I had like a... mini lab station in each one of the offices at the time to go there. Yeah, pretty much like a little workbench next to the sink in like the sterilization room.
So technically you have how many labs? Six.
Not anymore. So I was there for like 8 or 9 months, maybe 10 months. And then that fall of that same year is when he told me, he's like, I think you're outgrowing the lab space. And I was like, I would agree with you.
Are you by yourself at this time?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep. So it was just me and that assistant, which I was teaching her all the, she kind of runs what we call the lab chair. So she does all the co-softing now. She does all the adjustments. She sees all the follow-up like the next day from the extractions and stuff like that. And I taught her how to adjust, how to like, so that's going well. So she's still in the main office and he started searching for another building and we bought a building around the corner from the office.
Are you part of that process?
I was the only part of that process.
No, I mean like choosing the building.
Oh, really? So Jason didn't even see it. he literally let me start looking. I walked into that one. In that particular building, it was actually a hair salon. So when I walked in, it had like little like hair stations. They had like mirrors with like a bench with drawers. And I was like, oh my God, I could hire more people. We could all have our own little workstation. There was a wall that had like 3 shampoo chairs. I pulled all the chairs out. I put a bottle trimmer on one. I put an eyewash station on the other one. I put the sink in the middle.
Does it have that little neck swoop in the?
I pulled those, I pulled those right out. I sold them on Facebook Marketplace, by the way. That was how I helped revamp the whole lab.
So he like, just like, go find your own space. Yep. And he never saw it.
Never saw it. Saw it. He's like, you think he did.
That's insane. 100%. I mean, do you have real estate experience?
No, my dad's, my dad's a real estate agent. So when I told him, like he had one too, but I was like, hey, you know, just so you know, my dad's one and he'll play. put a search out there and we found two or three properties and I went to the other two 1st and I was just like, because we had it, the criteria was it had to be within 5 to 8 minutes from the office because like, but down, it was like downtown Canandaigua where my.
Downtown where?
It's Canandaigua, New York. I'm in the Finger Lakes region.
I mean, you keep saying Finger Lakes. I was like, I don't know what it is.
So if you look at New York, everybody sees New York City and then the whole rest of the state. You got Buffalo, Syracuse, and you go on an hour and a half in each direction and meet in the middle. That's the Finger Lakes.
And what is it? Five lakes and they're all like a finger.
Yes.
Interesting.
Okay.
Were you looking for a building? Wasn't like you need to make sure water, I ran all that. You had to do all that.
I ran all that.
So you had to do quite a build out probably.
Yep. So with me and the maintenance guy that was like handling the work on the three offices, he's just like, tell me what to do and we'll do it. And I helped him. I physically helped him run all the PEX pipe and everything to the you.
Got in there and I did it.
Yeah. So and then we only shut down for five days to move because I didn't want it. Like I shut down for a week to get everything, all the equipment and everything like that unhooked, loaded it in the back of my car, brought it over one car load at a time, unpacked it all. Five minutes. I'm right around the corner. Not even a mile. Yeah. So it's like.
That worked out real well.
Yeah.
Did you buy any new equipment for the new player? Oh yeah. I imagine.
So I outfitted. So we bought a VHF R5 and we started milling crowns.
So who's designing crowns?
So I was at first, because I learned Exocad and everything.
And then who taught you Exocad?
Myself and YouTube.
Seriously.
I took one class with Whitney, Courtney, actually at one of the Nowak Invitationals, I think. And that was like the first time I had already started playing with Exocad. They wanted.
So he just wrote you a check for Exocad. I love this guy. Just bought you Exocad. He did. Got you a nice computer.
He bought me the ultimate lab bundle too.
So my. Gosh, he says, Here you go, I don't know how to use this, but here you go.
Well, kind of. That's amazing.
Yeah.
Kind of.
So what, you just sit at home and just practice and play with it?
Yep. Practice cases and stuff like that. And it started with just posterior crowns because that's what everybody starts with. And at that time, AI was already starting to be a thing. And I'm like, if AI can do it, I can design A crown. Like, at least I know anatomy. At least I know how a tooth is supposed to look. At least I don't know. I know that there's digital companies out there that are bringing kids in that are just good with computers. I was like, I actually went to school for college for graphic design. So believe it or not, Exocad kind of aligns pretty similarly.
Interesting.
With Photoshop and Illustrator by Adobe.
Was there ever a thought of Exocad 3 shape or did you just, I want Exocad.
So he was the one that really pushed kind of like the Exocad because I had actually heard 3 shape was. Maybe better for dentures at the time.
I hear that, yeah.
I don't know, I've never used 3 shape. I just jumped right onto the Exocad. But he, on top of him with his multiple practice, he does like. client coaching and he has a podcast and stuff too. My Dr. does. And just his network of people had said, hey, we're doing our own crowns in office. We're using Exocad. Exocad's the way to go for crowns. So he was like, my colleagues tell me Exocad's the way to go. So here you are.
I think you made the right choice. I mean, I have heard 3 shape is a bit better on dentures right now, but is that going to change? I'm sure.
And then like, I think it was a game changer when Exocad brought out. and Elefsina with the copy denture. I use that feature all the time now, like, so I 3D print all of my...
I hope I did.
I'm not going to...
I think that's what it is. They use the weirdest names.
Yeah, well, they're all cities in Germany, right?
Is that what it is?
I think so, because they had Galway, they had Regica, they had Elefsina, they just dropped 3.3, but I don't actually...
Are you the first person ever on this podcast to make that connection that they're cities?
I wouldn't think so. I think somebody's talked about it, haven't they?
That's fascinating. Okay, so you started doing crowns?
Yep. And then?
Still doing analog dentures at this time.
Analog dentures. And then shortly after, so we moved in October and January of the following year, I hijacked a crown and bridge guy from Bonadent who was 45 minutes from me. He had been at Bonadent for 21 years. It's all good.
You gave him a better job, probably.
I did. And I was just like, I need you. I need you. You've been here. You know what you're doing.
How do you know about him?
So the office manager in our Canandaigua office, her, she's good friends with his girlfriend. And she just kept like, she's like, I know a ceramist. I know. And I was like, oh, you do. Oh, you do. Let me meet him. And I had to kind of court him for a little while to convince him. So he does all the fix now. So he doesn't do yellow on X's, I do those, but he does all the regular fix, like all the crown and bridge. So when he came in from Bonadent, he was in quality control manager position. So he had been doing, started with like PFMs and stacking porcelain. And then he had been just mostly staining and glazing and like grinding in, like finishing and then quality checking. So I taught him Exocad. Taught him how to use the VHF R5 and how to mill. Started teaching him green stage. We kind of learned green stage together. Because again, like I said, going from just single unit crowns to like up into full archer like bridges and like it takes a little more work in the green stage. So we kind of fumbled through that and learned that together.
That's awesome.
And then now on a day-to-day, he comes in, He does all of his crowns start to finish. He does the exocad design, makes the models, mills, mills them, green stages, puts them in the oven at night, and then next morning, yep. So like he gets the jobs all nested in the morning, gets the designs done, nests everything, starts the mill, then in the afternoon he stains all afternoon.
Wow.
And then next morning it's.
How many units is he doing? Do you know?
So last month he did 184.
Wow. Yeah. It's a lot for one person.
Yeah. So we do have a trainee in with us now. So she's actually taken over all the 3D printing and like the designing of the models and stuff too to free him up a little bit more. And he's actually working with her and teaching her how to stain.
Wow.
I'm working with her on some denture stuff because we're really trying to just be, you know, in such a small lab. Like you need the backup. Like if he has to take a day off, like if I have to take a day off, like everything stops. Like the wheels stop. You know what I mean?
So how many are you total now?
So we're Aaron, me, and one trainee.
Nice. And you've now moved to the digital denture now, right?
Yes.
So what are you doing with that? Are you printing them?
So I print the immediate dentures and then when they're all healed up, I have the doctor, I print out a monoblock and I relieve a little space in the monoblock denture where it's like the base and the teeth all in one. And then I have them take a wash impression and then some of them are scanning that wash impression and I'm using the copy denture feature in Exocad. milling the permanent denture or they're just using that monoblock, taking the wash and sending it to me and I pour it up and mount it with a blue bite and I analog set the teeth and then inject it still. So they actually get their option if they want a milled permanent or if they want an analog. I don't have the Ivotion module yet. I just mill two-part and loop the teeth together.
But it's still the Ivoclar material, right?
No, it's the Perlion. I use the Perlion base and the Aedite teeth. That 8ite Forever Young PMMA is just gorgeous.
So you mill the teeth.
I mill the teeth, mill the base. Yeah.
And what's the base again?
It's the Pearlion, it's the Nowak.
Oh.
They partner, I don't know, it's a couple booths down over there.
Yeah, it's all good. I just haven't, I haven't heard of it.
It's good stuff, Yeah, it's gorgeous. So I've tried a bunch of different PMMA, tried a bunch of different base materials. This one has like a really, natural look to it, and it has the little fibers and stuff, which I like to see. Like some of the PMMA just kind of looks like bubble gummy. You know what I mean? Just like a little bit dense, a little bit, so. But yeah.
So you mill the final. Yeah. How long does it take you to mill a final? On a VHF, right?
About 2 hours for the base and about 35, 40 minutes for the teeth.
And then do you put them together and mill them again?
No, I just glued them together with acrylic.
So you mill one, you mill the other, there's no additional milling.
Right. And then I just glued them together like the printed dentures basically.
What do you polish after that? Yeah.
So I got a little dabbling too into the composite and So sometimes I put some Mexico on there and.
Then, Make it look all Instagram fancy.
Yeah, kind of.
Yeah.
Playing with it a little bit.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So I got one doctor that lets me do that and just because I wanted to try it.
What do most doctors do? Want you to digital or do they want you analog?
Most of them are very happy with my analog setup. I got a couple. I'm kind of split. So half my doctors have been around a little while. And the other half, we got straight out of dental school because we are up to seven offices now and 14 doctors.
And there's three of you.
So, well, two of my offices, there's a pediatric office, an ortho office, and five general offices. And then even some of the general offices are more towards like, there's like an oral surgeon in one of the general offices. So I do like a lot of wisdom teeth or some of the other offices. I'll send them over to see him for the complicated extractions. But so four of them are probably in like 6 to 8 doctors send us regularly. And the way my owner like does it, he's really smart about it. He kind of runs it like a hair salon. So his doctors or his associates, they basically booth rent. They get paid adjusted production, but they pay their own lab bills. So they can use any lab they want. But he started us just to give them an option, because he wanted something like, so I do. We do billing, like we are Finger Lakes Dental Lab LLC. We bill, we're completely set up to take outside clients. Like we are an independent entity. We have all the insurance, we have all the, you know.
Do you take it other work?
Not right now, just because of capacity, but that's the goal. That's what I'm working towards.
Any of these doctors not send to you?
No, not really. Like the ones that I have right now, I have a couple that'll send out for, I don't know, some like we don't do PFMs or I got one for like a gold crown the other day and I was like, that sounds like another lab's problem. Like we're not going to cast a gold crown in here.
You just send it to a strategy or something.
Yeah, go ahead and we'll pass on that one. Thank you.
That's funny.
But that's the goal is to build the lab up and to take outside.
Do you want to be that kind of management? Do you want to get to the point where you have...
I do.
8, 10, 12, 20.
Yeah, I do.
Nice. It's a lot.
But like having the ability to just kind of, I pick things up pretty quick, you know, and having the ability to like... I would never want to be one of those managers that's just standing there with like a clipboard and asking for more production and more production and more. Like I'm there. I'm in the trenches with you. Like I can teach you how to do all these steps. Like I know what the expectation is.
It's a dangerous two-sided sword. I mean, you management, you want, I prefer someone that actually knows what's going on that can do it. But at the same time, Managers will get stuck doing it, and they'll be doing less management, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
I've worked with a lot of managers that just worked on the bench, and I'm like, You're not really managing, right? I mean, you're a great employee, but it's a hard balance.
But I'm hoping I can find that balance, 'cause I don't ever... I want to give up the bench entirely. I don't know. It's in me. I know I was born to do this.
Yeah.
And I just love it. And I just like seeing patients.
All on X. When did that start? Were the doctors doing it before you?
So Dr. Cammy is our one that started doing that. And she started it with me. So the first thing we were doing was taking like locator cases or what would have been locator cases and we were doing denture conversions. So I was doing in-office denture conversions.
Fun, ain't it?
Picking them up, grinding them down. And then we switched to this smart denture conversion kit.
I love smart denture conversion.
So that helped.
Yes.
Take a little bit of the headache out of the denture conversion.
We love smart denture conversion.
But then Cami and I were like, man, this still sucks. Like nobody likes.
It's so nerve-wracking to me.
And just if something goes wrong.
Just that day, it just.
So then when we realized that kind of sucked, she bought an Instarisa facial scanner.
Oh yeah, nice.
So, and we had Ed out from, we actually, I don't know how. I got so lucky. But I really, really found a good spot.
And we're at labs like, can you buy us a bill that's a little bit These guys. There you go. Here's the best of the best. Yeah.
So she flew down to Florida. She took me with her, took her assistant. So we went to the class with Art and Ed and everybody was there. Fernando. I learned a lot from Fernando. Man, holy cow is that guy. Learned even more Exocad from him and Ed. We purchased the Instaresis scanner. Ed came up to install everything. Worked with me in the lab. Showed me a little bit on how to put everything together and how to install the Instarisa like libraries into Exocad and everything. So I do all the designs now.
So Instarisa is photogrammetry or just?
Spatial, just the facial.
Are you doing photogrammetry?
On top of that? No, so Instarisa kind of has their own system. Yeah, kind of. So we use like an artificial reference screw that goes into the pallet or it goes in like the front and then there's fiduciaries and then you just match everything up that way. So it works pretty good. Like I love having the face. Like that is the most game changing thing. So when they, the patient agrees to treatment, they bring them in for initial records, take all the scans, take the insteresis scans. Everything comes to me. I get the face. I set everything up in exocad and I do some wax ups. I do the upper and lower design. And then they come back and then on the day of surgery, they take the arson, the fiduciary, all the scan positions or the scan body.
You were there in the office.
I was at first.
And then I got to be there.
Yeah.
I get it.
Sometimes I go over in the middle of the day because as the scans roll in on surgery days, I check them and take a look at everything. And then there's been a couple times. You're like, I was like, hold on, don't stop. Just stop what you're doing. I'll be right there. And they're like, wait, what? And I'm like, you didn't capture, you know what I mean?
Yeah, So.
Again, only 5 minutes away. Right around the corner.
Nice, you even get in a car.
Pop in the car, go right over there. And then it's funny because her assistant now, she knows, like, when she sees me in the hallway, she's like, oh, Jess is here. What do we do? Yeah. And Cammy looks up. Wait.
So you get all the records? Are you designing and printing and delivering that day and everything?
I talked him into the next day. So what we do, we do all the, get all the surgery records, all the scan position, everything like that. I align it to the wax up. Sometimes I have to tweak my wax up based on where she put the implants because she free hands everything still. We're working on that. We're going down that road.
I recommend real guides.
Yeah, with the, you know, exoplan and all. So that's the next step. I'm doing surgical guides and blue sky bio. She does them for like single units and bridges and stuff. And I was like, you know, stackable guides. Yeah, but there's a lot we can do with this all on X thing. So And then the records come in. So I'll finish the design. And then the next morning, I 3D print the provisional that goes in, stain it with opti-glaze, just kind of seal it up. We deliver that at 10 o'clock the next morning. So it gives me like just enough time, get it printed, ground in, stained, everything like that. And then when they get healed, they start coming back at three to four months and take a new set of records with everything with the new tissue, the face, like where my immediates landed, how everything looks. And honestly, with the Instarisa, like...
Not much change.
Not usually. Sometimes our bites are maybe slightly off if they got something a little off in the scan, but most of the time that midline is bang on, the teeth look bang on, and then I just sit there and have a conversation. I get to talk to the patients and ask them, like, what do you like? What do you like? What do you not like? What do you, know what I mean? Because that was the main thing, is I just didn't want to be like one of those cookie where it was like, you get this smile and you get that smile and you, when I'm doing dentures or I'm doing all on X, like if there's something they like about their smile, maybe their lateral's tipped out or twisted or whatever, let's copy that. Like, do you want the smile you've never had or do you want the smile you've always had?
Interesting. That's a great question.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I get those.
And they show you a picture from 1970 that's blurry and from.
But I get those. The one girl brought me a picture of Kim Kardashian and I was like, sweetheart. Your mouth is like this big. Like I couldn't make that happen if I wanted to, but just and just having that conversation and kind of setting that patient expectation like I will do the best I can for you. But sometimes what you're asking for, I had somebody ask me for fangs on an upper all on X and like fang fangs. Oh yes, exactly what you're thinking. Like Twilight, like fangs, fangs.
Did you do it?
No.
Why not? Because I didn't expectation.
Well, I told him that the only way I would be able to do that is he would maybe up and out of line. They wouldn't be hanging down like he's expecting.
Yeah, you can't function.
So right. And I explained the functioning and, you know.
Nobody knows that Dracula broke those things all the time.
But when you tell the patient that he also brought me a picture of a Hollywood actor that had like the really sharp and I'm like.
That's tough.
And I was like, but also, can you call that guy's agent and ask how many times he's been to the dentist to get those fixed, okay.
Because you just, have you used the Exocad art where they take a video of talking and you can put the restoration in it and show that same video.
No, not yet.
Check that out. That sounds really cool. when we were at them at their meeting last year and it's awesome. Yeah.
I've seen I've used Smile Creator and everything, but when I got the Instarisa, they even do Instarisa scans for dentures and everything now to all my digital dentures. So having the whole face like facially driven, it's just because it looks different than it looks on the stone model. Like anybody can make it look good on the stone models, but does it fit in the face? Does it does the facial flow there? Does it match like?
We make way too many dentures without knowing where they're going.
Right. So.
And we just base it off of a little line and wax that we get.
Or where it should be or where, looking at the insides of papilla or looking at the anatomy in the mouth and you're like, I think this is where it should go.
So does every office have a facial scanner? Or does it move around?
It moves around. Yeah.
I guess there's a limit to the money that's got.
There is a limit somewhere. Yeah. But no.
That's amazing.
So now we're in a little, it's I'm probably ready for a new building, but I'm in a little 1000 square feet. I got the Crowner Bridge corner. I have two benches, my area, and then so my area is like a U. I have my computer on the backside. I have my analog bench on the front side. Seriously, back and forth. And it's all in my little command center. And then I've got another full denture bench with a lathe, handpiece, all that stuff. I made a bench for like the optic glaze and stuff. So I did that. And then I have a second sintering oven and a second like crown and bridge area because I'm doing the zirconia. So when they come back, I do the printed immediates the next day. They come back three to four months. We do a PMMA prototype, tweak the design. I do as many PMMAs as needed. until they're happy with everything. And then we go to zirconia final.
So you do titanium bars underneath.
Not on all of them. Some I go zirconia direct to MUA. If I maybe didn't get enough clearance that I wanted, I'll put a titanium bar underneath. But I do all the composite on the PMMA and really try to get it looking like the final is going to look. and make sure the patient's happy. And then we either go, like I said, just fold zirconia direct handy. How long do you leave?
Them in the PMMA before you go to final? Up to the doctor, up to the patient.
Usually about two months, like two to three months. So it's probably six to eight months altogether.
Interesting.
She just keeps checking for osseointegration, just checking the implants.
No, I mean after osseointegration. And you put them in that PMMA temp. How long do you leave them in that temp before you go to final?
It's usually two or three months.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because she really wants them to like...
Be happy with it.
Yeah, be happy with it. Sometimes she loads the PMMA a little early too. That's why I say she waits for... So we immediately load everything we can. And then sometimes she'll pull them in for the second set of records at like two or three months. And then... Sometimes it's three to four, depending on her schedule. So she just makes sure all the implants are solid.
And how many is she doing?
Right now, so I limited how many surgeries she's allowed to do a week. Because there was one week they kicked my head. I did 3 surgeries in one week in August. And I was like, guys, I got other work. I was like, I love you. But just so when you do this and I'm checking the scans right away, like you're pulling me away from everything else and I'm one person doing. So I was like, we're going to do 1 surgery a week moving forward, please.
Are they doing about one a week?
Yeah.
I mean, that's a lot of surgeries, you know, at the end of the year.
Yep. And then she's got this thing now where She likes to batch her prototypes, like we call it stage two, when I go to do the PMMA. So the one day, the other day, I got five sets of prototypes in one day. And I'm like, Cammy, I'm like, you can space those out too a little bit, because that's still me.
She see all those patients all in the same day for the same thing.
Well, she has three assistants and she has three chairs. So she, the assistants do the majority of the records. They take all the mouth intraoral scans, they take all the face scans, they take the shade, they take the retracted.
They take it out, they put it in the temporary.
She's got one, yeah. They don't torque. Cami comes in and torques everything, but they'll seal the holes. they'll take out, put it in, get everything ready for her, then she comes in.
How do you get this work back and forth to all these offices?
So actually, we have a lab courier. So between our offices now, the doctor's brother is our lab courier. He has a GMC Terrain, and we have little bags that go from Finger Lakes Dental Lab to Finger Lakes Dental Care. I have them each labeled with the office location.
He just drives them back and forth all day.
He drives everything. So he goes to every office. picks up first thing in the morning, and then he takes everything from the lab and delivers it, comes back, checks in with me about lunchtime, and then goes around and does the second round. And then at the end of the day, comes back about 4 o'clock, 430, and takes everything else from the rest of the lab from the afternoon, drops all All that in Canandaigua, if it's one of the other offices, he waits till the next day for it to go out, but he's constantly, he picks up my repairs, he picks up my hard relines, he picks, if somebody needs something, if they're like, hey, you know, can you add a contact to this crown? Or hey, I was wondering if you have this case, because we accidentally scheduled them two days before the due date. Is it going to be done? So he runs all those kind of things.
Do you pay him or does the office pay him?
We kind of share it.
Interesting, yeah.
So the way that it runs, he's got the offices. We do have like a call center or contact center with girls that answer the phone and schedule for all. And then he's got like an HR department, he's got an insurance department, accounting department. So they're kind of separate. And then the lab and all the offices pay towards those folks, like the back end. So they kind of handle, like we all kind of contribute to the pot that covers. So there's like a monthly lab expense, you know, how is that? But it's worth it for me. Like that's having your own career. But also, I mean.
For a smallish lab, having your own HR department and all this, the resources, it's worth it.
Getting to be under that Finger Lakes Dental Care umbrella, you know what I mean? It's just, I'm just, it's fascinating.
Good for you.
He's kind of really doing it right. And like I said, he's got his podcast, he's got the Dental Lighthouse. He coaches the Just coaching, like mentoring other doctors, like dentists, like he's trying to be a DSO, but do it the right way. Like actually care, you know, what's going in the patient's mouth. Actually care and not just be another 100% factory.
Yeah.
I don't want to, you know.
Yeah, no, I get you.
He and Cami both, she has a whole day off. Like on Thursdays, she goes around to the other offices and mentors. So he hires a lot of dentists. straight out of dental school or straight out of with not a lot of experience. And then he himself or Cammy go around and coach up these younger dentists. so we have some of the veterans that have been there for a while. Does he practice still? No.
That makes more sense right now.
He does not practice anymore. He was still practicing when I first came on board for the last two years now. He's been just mentoring, running the business, coaching. Yeah. So just really.
What a great story.
He shows up to, you know, we have a lab meeting with him. Like he has office meetings. He shows up to the office meetings. We do quarterly meetings. Like everybody is like on the same page, like as an organization, how to move forward. Like we live by the core values. We, you know, It's all there, and he's just really hands-on with it all.
I love it.
Yeah.
I'm not going to say you got lucky. I'm going to say you found the right people.
I did.
And God, what a dream come true, really. Yeah.
So it's like really what I wanted to do, you know, on my own, but just like having his support or having his financial backing. Like, it's something that got me a lot further, faster. than if I was doing it on my own. But he's just really the trust he's put in me. We talk on a regular basis. He's even helped me with like personal situations and stuff like that. He's just that kind of, he, well, he didn't, but Cammy did. So he was, I don't know what's going on. He's got five kids. His son.
I never understood these people that have so much business. So much family. It's like, when do you breathe and sleep?
Yeah. Two of his, one daughter graduated college already. His second daughter's in college. His son is a middle linebacker for St. John Fisher on the football team. And then he's got 2 twin boys that are the same age as my son.
Any of them going into dentistry?
I don't know. That's a good. I know Anna's not, but I don't know if any of the ready, if the twins or any of the rest of them are going to carry it on. Man, I sure hope so. Because he and his wife, what they've built, like what he's built. I would hate to see an end here.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? It's just he set it up in just such a great way. And like I said, even personal situations, my son was like, being a 15 year old, having some body image issues, trying to starve himself because he thought he needed to lose weight. And I talked to Jason and I was like, I don't know anybody that knows as much about nutrition and health and, taking care of yourself. And he's done like body competitions and all kinds of stuff. So he brought my son over to his house, like talked about nutrition, talked about like meal planning, like brought his twins in there, like really just tried to, cause you know, What 15 year old wants to listen to his mother? Like no. So then when it comes from somebody else, but he's that kind of person. Like we had one of our dental assistants have his car stolen. Jason contributed like $1,000 to like a new car fund. Just like he actually cares about his staff. He cares about his employees. He cares about his patients. He cares about his community. Like they're constantly giving back. We have a weekly donation. So each employee in the office, if you clean the break room fridge, it's like your week to clean the break room and clean out the fridge and stuff. You get to pick the weekly donation to whatever organization that means something to you.
Wow.
You ever clean the fridge? I have, yeah. So I actually donated to my- You donated the foundation?
Oh, I'm sorry.
It should have at that time. But back when I did it, went to my local volunteer firefighters.
Nice.
They used to do like a roast beef dinner, and then with COVID, everything got shut down and they were struggling.
And, you got to support the firefighters.
Went to the fire department. Yep.
I love it. Jess, this is amazing.
Thanks for having me on again.
Bam, I want to talk to you in three years when you're like, I'm the biggest lab in New York.
I can't wait. Someday.
It's going to be awesome.
Someday, and then I'll have my CDT by then.
Yeah, you will.
I'm going to try to go for more than one specialty, hopefully.
One at a time.
I know, one at a time, but removable, I'm really kind of excited that they brought on this digital dentistry like path to in the CDT. So I was like, I know I can at least get those two. Which one are you going for first? Removable.
Yeah.
Get that done. But then I digital should be a close second.
It should be so easy for you.
I just love it. Like embracing both. Like I know there's always like, oh, analog's better, digital's better. Like why not have both? Like if I can print it, I'm gonna. If I'm gonna make it analog, I can do that too. Like it's gonna make them all better. Makes my life easier. Constantly trying different resins, constantly trying different PMMA. Like, yeah.
I love it. Jess, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.
We'll talk to you in a couple of years.
Sounds good, sir.
Thank you.
A huge thanks to Adite for allowing my good partner, Elvis, to set up at LabVest to get these great conversations without me. Everyone, go show them some love. Rick is bringing a pretty cool printer to the industry, and we love that we get to hear about it before it's even in a lab. If your lab likes to be on the cutting edge and you want to print 32 full-color multi-material dentures in just five hours, head over to novenda.com. N-O-V-E-N-D-A.com to learn more.
And congratulations to Jess. While the doctor had a lot of faith in you to get the job done, it says a lot about the dedication you have to make it happen. Barb and I always love it when good technicians connect with good dentist because only good things can happen.
And that's a lot of good so way to go guys.
All right everybody have a wonderful holiday. One more episode left in 2025 so we'll talk to you next week.
Have a cocktail on us and drink too much. Happy holidays.
Bye. All right, let's officially start.
Yeah, let's officially start because that was all good.
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.