Hi, I’m Brett Mays. I’m the Lab Tech / Dental Implant Coordinator here at Verber Dental Group & Dental Lab. I’m a CDT Lab Technician Crown & Bridge.
How did you end up working in a dental lab?
Brett Mays: Things kind of happen that you don’t expect them to happen. I had no intention of ever working at a dental lab. I didn’t even know what a dental lab was. I went to art school and I was taking fine arts and graphic design.
Then my mother, once I was graduated, said (and I didn’t have a job at the time) look at this in the newspaper, Thayer Dental Lab is hiring artistic people. So I applied, now it’s 23 years later, and I’m still working in a dental lab. (laughter).
When I first started in the dental lab business things were all handmade. I constructed crowns and bridges and full contour crowns out of wax. And then that wax was cast in an oven or pressed in an oven. So, it was totally handmade. All the way through the process technicians were handcrafting things going into patients’ mouths. Now, technology came out and 99% of things made in a dental lab are made through a computer. There’s some aspect of a computer touching everything that goes through. I like the technology part of the dental lab business. There’s always a new milling machine, a new 3D printer that can print something better than last year… So, it can be exciting.
Creating an All-In-One Dental Lab
Brett Mays: When I started Dr. Verber and I talked about, could we start a dental lab here for the Verber Dental Group doing some of the things that they would normally outsource and keep it here within the group? I was like sure, what a challenge, this is going to be awesome.
At first, I was doing little crowns here and there, and within a couple of months, I was doing everything you could possibly do in a dental lab. So, I would like to be a full-service dental lab here for the group, where, if there was something that needs to outsource, maybe here in the future we can just handle it within the group.
