Laboratory owner Stephen Lusty shares the advantages of a digital workflow and the equipment and materials he uses.
Stephen Lusty qualified as a dental technician in Cape Town, South Africa in 1997. He moved to the UK in 2001 and opened his own bespoke crown and bridge dental laboratory in Newquay, Cornwall in 2008 with a special focus on implant and aesthetic dentistry.
Stephen uses a range of GC’s products and equipment in his lab and has recently been involved in trialling two exciting new additions to the GC lab range – the ALS3 lab scanner, recently launched on the UK market in collaboration with Skillbond, and GC’s new multilayered zirconia disks, due to be launched in the UK in 2025.
Here, Stephen discusses the materials and equipment he uses and the advantages he sees of labs embracing a digital workflow, as well as getting his take on GC’s latest digital lab offerings.
Stephen Lusty Dental Laboratory is a fully digital, two-person lab. Can you tell us more about the set-up and what you see as the main advantages of being digital?
My small dental lab is totally digital and every case that goes through the lab is digitised in one way or another. Like most digital labs we use a lab scanner, a range of 3D printers and a milling machine for zirconia and PMMA. Alongside this we have two CAD PCs as well as one CAM PC with associated software. We run a separate station for accepting the intraoral scans that come in to us and use a NAS drive to centralise all the various bits of information.
The main advantage of digital – and I think many people working in digital would agree – is the repeatability. When we work on a case we always know that, if necessary, we can tweak a design or remake something without going back to the beginning. A digital workflow also allows us to communicate our vision with clients in a more demonstrative way so we can achieve better outcomes for patients in fewer visits.
Designing digitally means that the best manufacturing processes for our prostheses involve using specific materials that can be digitally processed. The majority of our final restorations are zirconia, but we also produce prostheses in milled Initial LiSi lithium disilicate glass ceramic, titanium, printed alloys and printed resin which are either pressed or cast. We also have trusted partners who produce our designs in the materials that we do not process in-house.
I understand you use a number of GC materials. How do you go about choosing your materials?
I work with products from different manufacturers that I believe to be the best and that work best in my hands. I use GC’s Initial Ceramics system, which has a broad range of aesthetic solutions for metal and all-ceramics in digital workflows.
I also use GC’s Initial LiSi, a lithium disilicate for producing aesthetic frameworks, single crowns, onlays and veneers, as well as a selection of materials from GC’s Gradia Plus composite system.
On the subject of materials and in particular zirconia, you have been involved in the pre-market testing of GC’s new multi-layered zirconia disks – Initial Zirconia Disk Multilayer Elite. What is your assessment of them so far?
The most important factors to consider when assessing multi-layered zirconia is that the transition should blend, the shade should be accurate, the translucency level should appear natural and it should be soft to process, putting less strain on the milling equipment.
GC’s new multi-layered zirconia disks deliver a high level of stability, strength and aesthetics, they are easy to process and give predictable, accurate shades. They do their job really well.
You have an ALS2 lab scanner from GC and you have also been testing the new ALS3. What is your opinion of these two scanners?
The ALS2 is an extremely accurate scanner. Since all our clients have intraoral cameras, we hardly ever scan entire cases, but we do need the capability to verify scans and to handle bigger jobs that intraoral scanners are unable to handle. The openness of the ALS2 means we can simply scan bites in and add them to intraoral scans, or just scan sections of cases to add to the scan data already received from the clinic.
The use of lab scanners has changed considerably over the last couple of years. They are very valuable pieces of equipment in any lab and a high-end scanner is more important than ever for accuracy, rather than several cheaper scanners used purely for volume of scans.
The ALS3 is another great scanner with additional benefits including a second camera, which means that data is captured more quickly on each scan. In other words, the scanner captures more on each pass to build a more complete model with one scan, rather than having to add additional scans to an initial scan.
I’m not looking to exchange my ALS2 any time soon because it does everything that I need. However, if I was looking for a new scanner, I would certainly consider the ALS3 as the additional features are a definite benefit.
What would you say to fellow technicians who are considering introducing these latest digital advancements from GC into their laboratories?
For those who require a stable, strong and aesthetic system, GC’s new multi-layered zirconia disks would be an excellent option.
The ALS scanners are also excellent pieces of equipment and if I didn’t already own an ALS2, I would be seriously considering an ALS3.
There’s one more important point to add: when choosing any new piece of digital equipment or new materials, the key must-have is direct access to support. You will always get great customer support from both GC and the KOLs they work with.
For more information about GC’s Initial Zirconia Disk Multilayer Elite range and the ALS3 scanner, visit gc.dental
This article is sponsored by GC.
