Hard Work and the Right Support: A Success Story

I opened my practice in 2019 with three operatories, one assistant, and one front office team member. The pandemic hit in 2020, and things slowed down. But when we opened back up, we quickly expanded to five operatories, then seven, and by 2022 we had grown into a 12-operatory practice. Today, we have four doctors, and we’re running a fully digital workflow with the glidewell.io^™ In-Office Solution. One of the biggest decisions we made during that growth phase was bringing in the Glidewell fastmill.io^™ In-Office Mill.

When we started, we were taking VPS impressions and sending them out to the lab. Then, we moved into digital scanning and used several labs — including Glidewell — for fabrication. But even with scanning, we were still relying on someone else to get it right.

The mill gave us something the lab couldn’t: control. We could take as many photos as we wanted and write detailed prescriptions — but once the case left our office, it was out of our hands. With in-office milling, that changed. The ROI wasn’t just financial — it was about finally being able to tell the patient, “We’ve got this from start to finish.”

Zirconia crowns are our bread and butter — especially for posteriors. We do some lithium silicate for anterior cases, but zirconia is what we need to deliver consistent and efficient results. And that’s where Glidewell stands out.

There are other mills on the market, but none of them come close to what the fastmill.io In-Office Mill can do with pre-sintered zirconia. I can mill a crown from a BruxZir^® NOW Milling Block in 30 minutes, fully finished and ready to deliver. In four years, we’ve never had one fracture — not one.

The glidewell.io In-Office Solution is simple and streamlined, which makes it easy for the team to handle. At this point, the doctors rarely do any scanning, milling or polishing. The assistants handle those tasks.

We have one lead team member who does most of the design work, and she can even remote into the system from home if needed. That’s how intuitive and flexible it is. We also have two or three other team members who handle design as backup, and everyone on the team knows how to mill, change blocks, and troubleshoot if needed.

We’ve milled over 2,000 units in four years, and I can count on one hand the number of times the mill has given us an issue that prevented a crown delivery. And if any issues come up, we call Glidewell, and they pick up on the first or second ring. They walk the team through everything without me having to get involved. That’s a huge win right there.

We still temporize some cases, and we use the mill for same-day cases when it makes sense — emergencies, time-sensitive treatments, things like that. But even when we’re not delivering on the same day, we get the benefit of total control.

I don’t have to rely on the lab to get the embrasure shape or contact points just right. I can have my team design it exactly how I want it, and we get the result we envisioned from the beginning.

We do a lot of dentistry here, but we don’t compromise on quality. I’ve completed fellowships in general dentistry and implantology, and our team takes continuing education seriously. We take pre-op photos, pre-cementation X-rays, and we check the margins on everything. We value quality over speed.

The glidewell.io system helps us maintain that level of quality while keeping our workflows lean. The control we get with the system is what allows us to deliver what we know is best for each individual patient.

The fastmill.io In-Office Mill isn’t just a milling machine — it’s a solution that works at scale. Whether we’re doing full-mouth cases, anterior units, bridges, or quick single-unit posterior crowns, we can trust the system to deliver.

That’s really what it comes down to: flexibility, quality and confidence. When patients walk in and say, “I’m going out of town tomorrow,” we can confidently let them know whether same-day treatment is possible before they leave. Being able to mill chairside allows us to practice better dentistry.