As a woman  dental lab owner and technician it  has been a great experience working with dentist from all over.  I have had ups and downs just like most all of you but what has helped is being committed to the success of this business.  I have recently put into place a system that I find very valuable to the growth of my lab and the business that I do with my clients.  So I wanted to share with you all exactly what I have found that works for me and I hope that it will allow you to see that what I do in the lab can help your dental practice if you so choose to send work to my lab.

• It all starts with the completed Work Authorization.  The start of any case begins with the instructions that the dentist sends with the impression sent to the lab.
• When I get the cases in the lab from the courier the case goes thru a disinfection process.
• The cases are then scheduled for each phase of manufacturing according to what the dentist has prescribed on the work authorization.
• Models are poured sawed trimmed, articulated, mounted (any irregularities on poured models sent by the dental office are removed), finally they are sealed and painted with two coats of die spacer.

Once the models have been APPROVED and inspected and there is no need for a call or email to the dentist the cases proceed on to the next step.

• Waxing, investing, burnout and then divesting take place.
• Then from there metal finishing begins.  Inspection of the metal copings are preformed under magnification (a process also used for die trimming and waxing margins).

As I am giving you the run down for PFMs other steps are preformed on various restorations.

• Porcelain application layering techniques begin followed by a series firings.
• Next the restorations are contoured and seated on the model checking contacts with articulating ribbon, tape and finally shim stock on both the sawed model and the solid model.
• Then the restorations are stained and glazed and any exposed metal is polished.
• Finally the units are gathered and quality controlled.  Disinfected and steam cleaned, packaged and returned via courier to the dental office with a QC card for the dentist to give feed back to the lab once complete.
• When the QC card is received at the lab we then evaluate where the lab can make improvements by compiling our list of suggestion and pin point the areas of most concern often times this requires us to go back to the basics and relearn our system of manufacturing.  We then make follow ups with the dentist to see if the changes we have made have improved within their practice.

The systems we have employed are PROVEN system that even the largest of labs employee and I was privileged to learn and now share them with those dental practices that choose to work with my lab.  I hope this little explanation of what goes on in my lab will help you to understand the process a bit more.  

Thanks for visiting my site

Make it a good one. And please follow me on the journey to SUCCESS!

Vernice Griffin

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