I was asked recently by a friend ( g’day, mate!) on YouTube about production areas if I had any ideas about desks and layout for an in-house lab.
Well I thought, hey why don’t I just post pictures of my lab, and since I just got an update to my iPhone 4S that takes panoramic pictures that I would be perfect! Sorry about the quality, but as you can see from the pics we don’t have a fancy looking lab, just functional. I really should have cleaned up first, but this is an honest look at a functioning lab.
I always like looking at pictures of other people’s lab, I get some great ideas about layout. I also get to see how some labs cope with what they got for an office, and what they do with the square footage. Hope, you enjoy looking at my department lay out. Please feel free to make suggestions, or even send in your own pics, I will post them here. ( RetainerDesigner@gmail.com)
Wire Bending Deparment
From left to right:
1. Far left: My messy area. You can see part of the computer I have sitting on another desk, that is perpendicular the black desks, that I do my managerial stuff on.
These black top tables are like the ones you use in your high school science class. Very durable, chemical/ heat resistant and very heavy!
2. To the right of my area is the nice clean area of Wilson the Wirebender.
3. “Just Grind” Picture – The owner of the lab put that up he runs the Crown and Bridge department. That was the name of his boat.
4. Biostar
5. Light Cure (They don’t make this kind anymore) machine To cure Triad material I use with the Biostar. I would love a Triad curing unit!
6. Spot Welder I also Like this one
7. Hydroflux Welder– My solder machine (Here is a video of me using it)
8. The white shelves house our Band Blanks we get them here
9. Just out of the picture on the right is our little grinding box with electric hand handpiece. This is so the wire benders can prep cases, cut out teeth, fit bands, ect.
As you can see the wire benders are working facing the window, with the extra equipment we need on what we call the “back table”.
Behind taking the picture me is a third table that the Crown and Bridge department uses to wax up crowns.
Acrylic Department
From left to right:
1. Lathe w/ Quick Chuck and a Splash Hood connected to a Vaniman Dust collector that is under the table. This is hwere we do the bulk trimming of the retainers.
2. The Box Love this thing! Great for containing all the acrylic grindings and keeping them off of everything. Its is connected to that same Vaniman Dust collector as the lathe. This is where we do all the fine, or finishing, grinding on the retainer using the NSK Z500 hand piece. ( Couldnt find it for sale anywhere, but it looks like this is the next generation) Awesome Electric hand piece! never had any problems with it since I bought it in 2004!
3. Fake Palm Tree
4. Computer for entering in cases using Ubuntu as the operating system and Winvoice as the online Dental lab software.
5. Great Lakes fume controller, this is where we “Shoot” acrylic.
I found this one interesting, if you dont have very much room you could combine The Box with the fume controller and use this.
6. Acrylic Cabinet (Just a kitchen cabnet you can get from your local hardware store: HomeDepot, Lowes). In here I store all our acrylics That I get from JBC and Company .
7. Pressure Pots We use two Pressure pots because:
1. They were on sale at the time if you bought two.
2. It helps with production when your acrylic guy does between 20-30 retainers a day. He can pour 1 or 2 retainers up, put them in one of the pressure pots go back to pouring up another 1 or 2, put them in the second pressure pots with out bothering the first pressure pot during that crucial first 10 minutes of curing.
There you go, there’s 2 of my departments, If i feel like cleaning one day I will do a panoramic of the pumice/ plaster room.
Leave any comments/ suggestions below or if you would like to send me pics of your lab just email them to me and I will post them here with your description.
