It all started on Thursday night where we had the chance to meet colleagues from all over North America to discuss the new and old ways of our profession.
Being one of the youngest dental lab owners I sat back and listened to what everyone had to say, but quickly realized that age doesn’t matter in the fast-changing environment of dental laboratories.
It doesn’t matter if you are a lab rat for 20+ years waxing up most of your life or are part of the PlayStation generation that got into digital dentistry a little sooner.
We all came to the conclusion that it is an absolute must to hop on the digital train as well as to integrate your knowledge of analog techniques in the dental lab industry.
ALEXANDER WÜNSCHE’S LECTURE ON DIGITAL WORKFLOWS AND CERAMIC DENTAL LABS
Friday morning started with what I was most excited about, Alexander’s lecture on digital workflow and where you fit in as a ceramic dental lab.Listening to Alex made me and most of my colleagues understand that what we had discussed the night before; how to keep your custom dental lab running well.
It doesn’t matter if you are a three-person boutique lab or a big production laboratory. If you have never waxed a tooth how can you design it in a CAD software? If you don’t know how to articulate stone models how do you want to set up a full arch on a virtual articulator?
Many practices I learned in dental college that I thought would be forgotten are actually making a comeback, and I’m more than happy about it.
If we use what we have learned in analog and we combine it with the digital workflow, we have an even bigger opportunity to explain the different dental lab restoration options for patients.
When a patient is a heavy bruxzir and needs a crown on a molar you don’t have to prescribe them a full contour zirconia crown with 1500 mP just because it’s fast, cheap and tooth coloured.
The strength of a natural tooth is 130 mega Pasquale. What do you think will happen to the opposing tooth over time when you know the patient is grinding their teeth extremely hard?
Source: Schack Dental Labs








