A true CAD/CAM training course

I own Alliance Dental Laboratories in Adelaide and have been using Sirona CAD/CAM for the last 25 years, since the end of CEREC 2. The way that CAD/CAM has evolved, giving us so many more options of what we can produce in-house these days, can sometimes be a bit overwhelming. It’s like most things in life - an ongoing learning curve. Having said that, I believe support and training are just as essential as the hardware or software one invests into.

I am therefore attending any training courses Sirona puts on where I can to further my knowledge and get more bang out of my inLab system. The latest course Sirona put on (inLab Symposium) was pretty much topping it all.

The focus is on you

What I liked most was that their course is really about you. It was a hands-on workshop and the focus was not on selling you more equipment or another software package. The focus really was on training. Sirona brought in their product managers for inLab hardware and software from their head office in Bensheim, Germany. These guys were very knowledgeable not just with all the Sirona products and software, but they have extensive knowledge on all the other CAD/CAM systems and software labs use and were able to demonstrate how inLab integrates. On that note, it was interesting to meet other technicians using 3Shape, exocad, etc and receiving files from all sorts of different intraoral scanners and hearing how well inLab performs. There was a lot of experience shared amongst all participants which was great. We had technicians with different backgrounds, different levels of experience, some who just got into inLab, some that have been in it for a long time and some that were seeing how it could integrate with their current system. Sirona managed to address our individual needs to make the course a valuable experience for everyone.

The venue

At this point, I have to mention the venue. Honestly, having been to other presentations and courses, what Sirona has is so much better than a hotel. The training facility in Sydney is simply awesome and has been designed for events like this. Because it’s so special, it attracts people from all over Australia and New Zealand. We had technicians from as far as Perth and Darwin and a few from New Zealand and it was really interesting to see what everyone else does and share information. It was not just about lectures and demonstrations - we all got hands-on experience on the software and it was not just Sirona presenting, but also technicians sharing their experience and demonstrating.

The inLab family

One thing that really stood out was that everyone was happy to share and discuss information and was not shy or scared of giving something away. I have also joined the two forums on Facebook where we all meet and keep in touch, but meeting in Sydney and seeing each other face to face really was a great experience and the energy that was generated in that room has given me new focus and drive. Experiencing how dentists connect through Sirona Connect to us labs and to see all the new possibilities (besides crown and bridge cases) and efforts by Sirona to have dentists to connect to us was fantastic. It was even better when I started to actually receive digital cases from dentists back home!

It feels great to be part of that group and it is a great resource and help as well as giving you a sense of working together rather than seeing each other as competitors in the lab business.

All in all, the inLab Symposium was a course I can really recommend to anyone! Thanks to Sirona for putting it on and keep going with it in the future!