Q&A with a Dental Technician – Shade Matching to Contact Points – PDP137

You asked, we answered! Q&A with a Dental Technician - everything you wanted to ask (but never did) from our Facebook community.



A legendary Dentist once told me that an average dentist working with a good technician will do well in their career. This advice has always stuck with me ever since. I recorded this episode with one of my technicians Graham Entwistle of Trueform Dental Laboratory who has been a pleasure to work with.



From shade matching to getting the occlusion right, we made quite a geeky little episode which was well worth the 200 mile round-trip to his lab!




https://youtu.be/tMiC_18fiqc
Check out this full episode on Youtube



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Protrusive Dental Pearl: It's high time that you find your ideal dental technician, build a relationship and grow together. Whether you are using a big lab or small lab, try to visit and meet them and be open to getting feedback and criticism from that ONE technician that will elevate you. Don’t forget to give credit to your technician for their craftsmanship - take a photo of their work being fitted and email them - credit them on social media!



Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!



Highlights of this episode:



2:32 Protrusive Dental Pearl7:55 Graham Entwistle’s Introduction13:41 Q1: Analogue vs Digital?17:11 Q2: Impressions or Scans for Veneers?18:32 Q3: Is Digital good enough for high-end work and multiple crowns? 21:12 Q4: Are our impressions and scans good enough for you?26:15 Q5: To break contacts or not to break contacts for veneers?29:09 Q6: How does Graham create digital models with unbroken contacts of veneer preps?30:35 Q7: What is the best material for masking discolored anterior teeth?36:16 Q8: Shade matching for a Single Incisor Crown - the hardest thing in Dentistry?42:06 Q9: How do you overcome contact point issues with digital as opposed to stone models for single crowns?48:55 Q10: Digital Triple Tray or Full Arch Scans?52:32  Q11:  Getting the occlusion right for crowns55:26 Tips for dentists to help the technician to get the bite right



Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim and I are currently working on a huge project called OBAB, Occlusion Basics and Beyond – it will be the best occlusion resource in the Milky Way…and that’s our mission! We want to finally demystify Occlusion and make it Tangible!







Join the waiting list HERE!



If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like another episode with Graham Entwistle: 5 Things your Technician Wished You Knew











Click below for full episode transcript:



Jaz's Introduction: An average dentist working with a good technician who will do very well in their career. This was some advice given to me by a legendary dentist called Raj Rattan.



Jaz's Introduction:It was about nine years ago now. I remember exactly where I was, who I was with. What I was wearing is just like, really emphatic advice to me at the time. It's just stuck with me throughout my career, and it's not too different to the advice that Finlay Sutton gave. A few episodes ago. If you scroll down and listen to that episode about Scandinavian Design of Partial Dentures, and he said to find a technician who's a similar age as you, who's got a similar appetite for dentistry as you do and grow together.



Hello Protruserati. I'm Jaz Gulati, and welcome back to another episode of Protrusive Dental Podcast. This time, it was actually a rare face-to-face episode that I recorded. I drove over a hundred miles to see Graham, my technician, and the theme was to answer your questions that you'd sent on the Facebook group, everything you wanted to know from a technician.



But NEVER ASKED. We covered things like digital versus analogue. Is digital there yet? Should we be opening contacts for veneers? Heck do technicians like it when we open the contacts for veneers?