The lab's blog
Digital that serves your peace of mind (not the other way round)
By Hadrien Mauve, co-founder of Opal Dental Lab · Clinical review: Dr Irina Visan, dental surgeon · 2026-08-17
Look at what working with a laboratory really costs your day, outside the procedures themselves: the order form filled in between two patients, the impression to export and send, the phone call to find out whether Friday's crown will actually be there, the piece you discover at seating. None of these moments is spectacular. Added up, they represent hours per month — yours and your assistant's — and a mental load that appears on no schedule. That is the time a good laboratory tool should go after.
Ordering: one minute, no re-typing
If you work with a Medit scanner, your impressions arrive in your workspace on their own, and the case presents itself pre-filled: prosthesis type, material, shade, teeth. You check, adjust if needed, confirm — one minute, watch in hand. The impression can be viewed in 3D directly in the browser, no software to install: a dragged impression, a blurry margin or a missing bite shows up before production starts, not eight days later when the piece arrives. Every re-typing avoided is also a transcription error avoided: the A2 shade that becomes A3 on its way through a paper form no longer exists.
Tracking: knowing without having to ask
Calling your laboratory to find out where a case stands is a call you do not have time to make and they do not have time to take. So every order displays its delivery date from the start, then its live stage — design, production, control, shipping. Your front desk can book the patient on a reliable date, and if something delays a piece, you see it early enough to reorganise the schedule instead of suffering it. When you do have a real question, the messaging thread is attached to the order: the person answering has the case, the impression and your photos in front of them.
Seating: the moment that should be calm again
A piece discovered at seating is the worst logistical scenario in the practice: patient installed, anaesthesia done, a contact point to open or an occlusion to balance in a hurry — sometimes a remake decided in front of the patient. We organised the flow so that this scenario disappears: you approve the 3D design upstream, then photos of the finished work before shipping. Whatever bothers you gets corrected while the piece is still with us. The seating appointment becomes what it should be: a procedure you control, on a piece you have already seen.
And what we refuse to build
A laboratory tool has no business sending you notifications to justify its existence, nor imposing yet another dashboard to check. We build our tools ourselves, and every feature passes the same filter before it ships: does it remove work from the practice, or does it add some? If the answer is not clear, it does not ship. Your attention belongs to your patients; our job is to claim as little of it as possible.
Judge us on the work.
Free practitioner account, first order in one minute, 3D design and photos to approve before shipping.
Create my practitioner account →