I'm a dental tech for over 10 years and speaking about prices all I can say is that we (well not really we, but more like generations before most of us became techs) f***ed ourselves, because right now we are probably in the worst situation since before the implants came around, because many of us opened new labs and just to enter the market and compete with others - we lowered the prices for new clients..and then other new techs did the same and so on, so now it's not good..to earn more money people usually have to increase the number of units they make, or negotiate bigger percentage with the lab owner, or invest in new technology which would help make more units.. so now we have new technology to increase unit number, but that also lowers the need for new dental technicians, which is fine, nobody has to loose their job, education system takes care of that by lowering the acceptance number..so like I said - we have new toys to make our daily work easier (sometimes harder, but whatever..),but since most labs have good toys and sell units cheaper, because it's easier and some would argue better to make let's say zirconia - we just lost our advantage of adding new technology to make more units, because now we make more units, but sell it cheaper and we can't negotiate bigger percentage, because the demand of techs is already not too big and we can't really invest in new technology, because as far as I know there isn't anything that would save the situation, I mean there isn't anything new that would be so significant that would restart the whole dental industry..some might say that 3d printers might be this new thing after like 3-5 years when it's better, but I doubt it..also it's not really new, our field had few big moments in our history, I only know about the times when implants came around, it was big because it was new and harder for techs (now I'd argue it's easier..) to do their job, therefore it cost more, also I remember when cam cam came around - it was also a big thing, because now we were introduced to a new material..so now in 2023 we don't really have anything as big as those other things..maybe in the future the AI might be used as like doctors AI assistant, it might be able to scan and analyze the situation and suggest the best action to take accordingly..and then send that data to the lab and it would save us some time and maybe in the lab we'd have AI which would analyze the given data and pick colors or things like that, maybe suggest a map for ceramist, or something like that..but anyway it still would not be as relevant as bigger new things we already had in our past..there you go, that's my rant, I'm not very optimistic about the future of our field