Since 2023 Khai Nguyen Dental Lab has run a continuing programme called “Alongside the Dentist” and Khai Nguyen Academy: hands-on courses and workshops that let clinicians see how the work inside a laboratory is actually done. This article covers two representative programmes and what participants take away from each.
A 12-hour course as a dental technician
The course is for clinicians who want to carry out every stage of fabricating an all-ceramic restoration themselves rather than hear it described. It runs over five sessions of two and a half hours each, limited to twelve participants so that everyone has their own bench.
Content: the complete all-ceramic fabrication workflow, a materials overview, the basics of CAD/CAM, and — the main part — hands-on waxing, CAD/CAM design, pressing, framework adjustment, ceramic layering and grinding, staining and glaze firing.
What participants take home: two layered veneers, one lithium disilicate onlay and one monolithic multilayer zirconia crown, all made by their own hands.
The real value is not those four restorations. It is that after layering ceramic once, a clinician understands why the laboratory asks for 0.8 mm rather than 0.5 mm on the facial surface, why a shade photograph with a tab in frame matters, and why a case on a dark preparation takes longer. That understanding is the foundation of better clinic–laboratory collaboration.
Workshop: polishing ceramic restorations chairside
“Which polishing bur should I use before and after cementing a ceramic restoration?” is the question we receive most often from clinicians, so the laboratory dedicated a workshop to it on 12 July 2023, limited to eighteen participants. It was led by technician Nguyen Van Hoi, founder of Khai Nguyen Dental Lab, together with Dr Tran Thi Ngoc Trang, co-founder of Nikkori Dental.
Above: the chairside ceramic polishing workshop, 12 July 2023, in partnership with Shofu and Sota-D.
Content: principles of chairside ceramic polishing, the sites that require polishing, bur recommendations for both intraoral and extraoral use, and separate protocols for each restoration type: restorations prepared with the BOPT vertical technique, veneers, onlays, inlays, crowns and bridges, and ovate pontics. The hands-on element was polishing a three-unit zirconia bridge.
What participants take home: a set of thirteen genuine Shofu polishing burs — six straight handpiece and seven contra-angle — a Universal Diamond polishing paste, a bur holder, and the three-unit zirconia bridge used for practice.
Why this subject matters: a ceramic restoration that is occlusally adjusted and not repolished leaves a rough surface that stains and abrades the opposing dentition. The same point is made from the laboratory side in preparation for crowns and veneers.
Other programmes in the series
- Seminar on bite registration with Dr Tran Thi Nguyen Ny, May 2023.
- Workshop “How to indicate zirconia in the digital era of dentistry”, 28 November 2024 at C-space Coworking, District 3.
- Internal training on the Shofu Vintage LD pressed ceramic system with Sota-D and Shofu Dental, November 2022.
Source: Khai Nguyen Dental Lab Facebook page, posts of 20 February 2023, 8 May 2023, 19 June 2023 and 21 November 2024.
Bài viết dành cho bác sĩ và kỹ thuật viên tham khảo. Khai Nguyên Dental Lab chỉ chế tác phục hình theo chỉ định chuyên môn và không bán trực tiếp cho bệnh nhân.
