Good morning

[JohnWilson]

Designed ,milled, colorized. 27 units 3h 25. Min

A new record for me

 

[RileyS]

I will be showing this to my scanner/designer!
Good job
Were a lot of these from multiple unit cases? So less models scanned then 27?

 

[JohnWilson]

All digitization was done the night before by my scanning tech, he also does preliminary designs that I "tweak" in the morning. He is getting very good and my tweaking is becoming less and less. I do all the nesting and tweaking of CAM.

The most time consuming process is waiting for the mill to finish and cutting them out of the disk. No matter what it has taken my small labs production and allowed our throughput to almost double in less than 18 months.

We are looking for more mills

Who says this industry is only profitable for the big boys!

 

[shane williams]

What mill you using John? What kind of stagegies can mill out that fast? I plan on 20 min a unit, if I do a full disk then I plan on overnight milling! Hey did you recieve those Zenostar pucks?

 

[zero_zero]

I'm curious too. 8 min/unit milling time is impressive.

 

[ParkwayDental]

If I recall right this Scotch Drinking son of a gun has an Imes?

 

[JohnWilson]

I have a Mini and a IMES 4820 running off of the advanced cam that I recieved with my wieland mill. The ant's are less than 5 min to mill on fast milling strat., the biggest molar using the .3 bur for FISSURE only are around 12 the screw retained units on abutment mill strat is about 10. The units are grouped per puck per disk to minimize tool change and facilitate fast mill times. All of these units milled with a margin offset of .1 as you can see they are sharp and sweet. Everyone of these units were done in 4x.

 

[Marcusthegladiator CDT]

Looks like fun...

 

[grabo]

Are all those crowns full monolithic zirconium ?

 

[RileyS]

What is your scanner designer expected to do each day as far as#of units?

 

[JohnWilson]

What is your scanner designer expected to do each day as far as#of units?

He does all of our soft tissue implant models and investing during the morning and scanning in the PM. I crossed trained him on the 3shape system after I had about a year to feel very proficient. He has been awesome and really has come a long way in just the last 6 months.

We scan everything each day but mill by batch/date here. We are working on a 5 day turnaround on FCZ restorations so we have some room . This allows us to stack the schedule to be most productive and to fill disks rather than mill one or 3 at a time. I have no hard and fast rules for production, I let my guys manage themselves mostly and this has led to a very good work environment. We have weekly meetings where we discuss what is working and what needs to be addressed and put team concepts into play. Its very telling to listen to your techs, while many of them do not have the business background I run with, they have wonderful and helpful suggestions to make our lab work better.

I always felt that if my employees felt like they were making a difference in the decision making it would be most beneficial to moral. I still stand by that.

 

[RileyS]

Words from a book I just read!
I like the strategy of milling. We don't have a mill yet, unless the inlab counts, so I like hearing how people manage theirs.
To dig further, whats the average amount of designs being done each day. Ours is typically 18 (scanned too). That includes Nobel scanner and straumann scanner. I feel much more can be done in the day though.

 

[Affinity]

How big is your lab john?

 

[JohnWilson]

How big is your lab john?

I have 10 team members.

 

[JohnWilson]

I have never dedicated an employee to scan/design exclusively all day long. My numbers would not be a good indicator as we try and cross train staff to be more versatile and to be able to work with in a department not just one step.

We are small enough to offer personal service to our clients that the same tech works specifically with a set of clients based on esthetic demands and personal artistic traits/needs. Also we do not have the the volume of cases coming right now that forces a different working model. My goal this year has been to grow FCZ but not at the expense of other restorations but as a faster way to better serve my clients needs and price constraints. While I am impressed with where we have taken the department I still feel we are nowhere near our maximum per tech. My goal was to increase 10 units a day over where we were 2 years ago and we exceeded that in the first 6 months of owning a mill. The plaster department is our bottle neck now and I am looking to hire another tech to help out as I need to get off the bench and do more marketing/phone work.

 

[shane williams]

I have never dedicated an employee to scan/design exclusively all day long. My numbers would not be a good indicator as we try and cross train staff to be more versatile and to be able to work with in a department not just one step.

We are small enough to offer personal service to our clients that the same tech works specifically with a set of clients based on esthetic demands and personal artistic traits/needs. Also we do not have the the volume of cases coming right now that forces a different working model. My goal this year has been to grow FCZ but not at the expense of other restorations but as a faster way to better serve my clients needs and price constraints. While I am impressed with where we have taken the department I still feel we are nowhere near our maximum per tech. My goal was to increase 10 units a day over where we were 2 years ago and we exceeded that in the first 6 months of owning a mill. The plaster department is our bottle neck now and I am looking to hire another tech to help out as I need to get off the bench and do more marketing/phone work.

That's nice, I'm not so lucky!! I am the dedicated scanner/designer! And have been for like ever! It's alright though, I actually prefer to be shoved in a room the size of a closet and isolated. Better to listen to music with nobody to complain about. I like the goal of increasing by 10 units a day from 2 years before. I have been keeping track lately,(not cuz I'm a numbers whore, but so I can start gaging better usage on disks) and just for the month of May we are at 373 zr units as of last Friday. Two years ago when we really started doing a lot of FCZ we did around 250 a month. What is really nice is another lab in Iowa has started sending us all his FCZ to outsource for him. With the units he sends it almost pays for the disks I order. I did some number checking the other day using averages(since disks price varies accourding to size) we would have spent this month already $15,000 in outsourcing, billed out something like $39,000(this is just in FCZ). Where as milling in-house my cost for material is only like $2,800, the same billed of $39,000, this has actually increased profits just on material, since scanning/designing, and stain/glaze are the same wheather outsourcing or in house milling, about 62%. Everyone on here would love to save on average of $15,000 a month on Zr.

Although zr crowns seems to have taken its hold on are lab, I hate sitting there doing 45-60 single units a day. Plus all the wax for e-max and gold crowns. I'm really excited to do my first IZIR style case. I should be getting it here in the next couple of days. Thats what I think is going to take this by storm. More screw-retained FCZ singles, bridges, and full mouth cases.

I like your system you got going there John. I try to follow a simular pattern, but it seems I always get a case that has to jump over others cuz a certain dr needs his in 3 days, ALL THE TIME!! But yes mill accourding to dates is crucial. But I like to keep my mills going round the clock, so when I'm designing(I'm training someone to scan) I tend to send the earliest dated ones to the mill, continue to design and so on and so on...I like to keep wax for last and mill it over night. We don't make money with wax so I don't want it clogging my mills during the day. Especially if I have an emergency case pop up that needs milled ASAP. Meeting are a good idea, don't really work for me since it's really just me, haha.

 

[ParkwayDental]

Words from a book I just read!
I like the strategy of milling. We don't have a mill yet, unless the inlab counts, so I like hearing how people manage theirs.
To dig further, whats the average amount of designs being done each day. Ours is typically 18 (scanned too). That includes Nobel scanner and straumann scanner. I feel much more can be done in the day though.

Speaking for our lab we are averaging between 85 and 125 units a day. This is a mixture of FCZ, PFZ with overpress, PFM Copings with overpress, Full Cast, And Emax. We have a scanning station set up with two 3 Shapes and one person will run both scanners and scan everything in that day. While he is scanning I have another employee and myself design everything. I design about 65 units a day. My other employee will cover the rest. If one of gets a moment during the day, we will hop over to the cut out station and cut out all of the milled units. We are 87% FCZ, 7% PFZ, and the rest is a mixture of Emax, PFM, and full cast. Our key is the person that is scanning is a dedicated scanner all he does is scan. We run pretty lean but we make it work. I have a great team in the CAD dept and we work well together. No one has to tell each other what to do we just do it and get the job done. We mill all night and all day. We average about 5 pucks in a 24hr period.

This should give you an idea of what is capable. This is just scanning and designing, this doesn't include the digital files we receive from other labs. There are some long days but my employees's get paid good for what they do and they don't mind working their as$ off and getting overtime.

 

[RileyS]

Thanks fellas

 

[Tom Mappin]

Although zr crowns seems to have taken its hold on are lab, I hate sitting there doing 45-60 single units a day. Plus all the wax for e-max and gold crowns.

I'm just curious, Shane, are you milling the wax for the E-max and gold crowns? And if so, how much does that cost each month if you don't mind my asking?

 

[shane williams]

I'm just curious, Shane, are you milling the wax for the E-max and gold crowns? And if so, how much does that cost each month if you don't mind my asking?

Yes we are scanning and milling E-max and gold out of wax. The disks we use we purchased from Sagemax, and they are about $12 a disk. I get about 30 units a disk. There isn't really a way to determine how much a month. It cuts out 30-45 min of wax time down to 7 min scan and design time. Only thing needed to be checked are the margins.