Kuraray Noritake
KATANA Zirconia STML
750 MPa
flexural
4Y multilayer zirconia — the workhorse balance of strength and translucency.
38% light transmittance
Where it is wrong: Not indicated for spans beyond three units in heavy function.
Lumina · 35 years at the bench
Precision
you can see.
A digital dental laboratory partner for practices across the United States. A named bench, named materials, published turnaround, a warranty you can read in one sitting — and a portal that shows you exactly where your case is, at every hour of its life.
- 5days
- Crown & bridge
- 35years
- At the bench
- 24hours
- To a review decision
- 0minimums
- No volume commitment
Scanner exports we accept
3Shape TRIOSPrimescan / CERECiTeroMeditPlanmecaCarestream
Four problems with laboratories
You already know what is wrong
with your current laboratory.
Vague turnaround, unnamed materials, a price that arrives by phone call, and a warranty buried in terms and conditions. Here is each one, and what we do about it instead.
01
“You cannot find out what is in the crown.”
We name the material
Every restoration we quote states its manufacturer, its product line and its published flexural strength. Not 'premium ceramics'. KATANA STML at 750 MPa, or IPS e.max Press — so you know what you are seating.
02
“The price depends on who is asking.”
We publish the ladder
The rate card is a rule, not a negotiation. 8% off list from 200 units a month and 16% from 500, published on the open site. Two practices sending the same volume pay the same figure, and neither had to be good at haggling to get it.
03
“The delivery date has the shipping hidden inside it.”
We separate bench time from transit
5 working days at the bench, plus a stated transit band for your region. Blurring those two numbers is how laboratories quietly miss delivery dates, and we will not do it.
04
“You find out it is wrong with the patient in the chair.”
We show you the work before it ships
Every completed case is photographed under controlled light and posted to your dashboard while it is still in the building. Seeing it early is the cheapest remake prevention that exists.
What we make
Five departments, one case number.
A full-service catalogue: fixed, implant, removable, appliance and digital work, all under one prescription flow and one dashboard.
5 working days
Monolithic zirconia crown
Full-contour multilayer zirconia, milled and sintered on one bench from one blank. The default posterior unit — no porcelain to chip because there is no porcelain.
5 working days
Lithium disilicate crown
IPS e.max, pressed or milled. Still the reference standard for a single anterior unit bonded to prepared enamel.
12 working days
Complete denture
Conventional and fully digital complete dentures, processed in high-impact base resin with a recorded, not assumed, occlusal scheme.
The material library
Ask any laboratory to name the puck.
Most cannot, or will not. Ours is published — manufacturer, product line, yttria class and the flexural strength the manufacturer prints on the box. Your case record carries the lot number of the exact blank yours was milled from.
Ivoclar
IPS e.max CAD
530 MPa
flexural
Milled lithium disilicate — the reference standard for bonded anterior units.
HT / LT / MO / HO ingots
Where it is wrong: Requires adhesive cementation to reach its published strength.
Kuraray Noritake
KATANA Zirconia HT / ML
1100 MPa
flexural
3Y-TZP high-strength zirconia for posterior and long-span work.
Lower translucency — strength-first
Where it is wrong: Too opaque for a single anterior unit next to natural enamel.
Ivoclar
IPS e.max ZirCAD Prime
650–1200 MPa
flexural
A gradient disc that runs 3Y at the cervical and 5Y at the incisal within a single blank.
Graduated across the blank
Ivoclar
Ivotion
A bonded disc that mills the base and the teeth as a single monolithic body — no bond line to fail.
Certified implant-grade stock
Grade 5 titanium (Ti-6Al-4V)
Custom abutments, bars and full-arch frameworks milled from solid.
Publishing the limitation of a material alongside its strength is unusual. It is also the only honest way to present a library: a 5Y zirconia that transmits 43% of light is a beautiful anterior crown and a poor three-unit bridge, and you should hear that from your laboratory rather than from the remake.
Working with us
Six stages. Every one of them visible.
From the moment you open a file with us you have a dashboard. Every case moves through the same six stages, and each stage writes to a timeline you can see — including the one where we tell you the scans need redoing.
1
Upload your scans
Awaiting scans → Submitted
Open a case and send the files. Two minutes, from any device.
- Your practice
- Start a new case in your dashboard, complete the prescription, and drag in your scan files, photographs and any supporting documents.
- The laboratory
- The case reaches the review desk the moment its first scan lands — timestamped and queued. Until then it waits in your dashboard, and no delivery clock is running.
- Every major scanner export is accepted — STL, PLY, OBJ, DCM and full case archives.
- We are a fully digital laboratory. Conventional impressions and stone models are not accepted: an impression adds a pour, a post, a remake when it distorts, and days of shipping in both directions before anyone has looked at the case.
- A case with no scan on it is never in our queue and never counted against your turnaround. It sits as Awaiting scans until you attach one, so a case nobody uploaded to cannot quietly go missing between you and us.
- The prescription form explains its own fields, so a new team member can send a case correctly on their first day.
2
Scan review and approval
Under review → Approved, or Revision requested
A technician verifies the scans before the case enters production — and if something is wrong, you hear within 24 hours, not on the delivery date.
- Your practice
- Nothing, unless we ask. If the scans cannot produce a restoration that will seat, you receive a notification naming exactly what needs recapturing.
- The laboratory
- Margins, adjacents, opposing, bite registration and clearance are checked against the prescription. The case is either approved into production or returned with specifics.
- Review is a named stage with its own clock, not something that happens silently inside 'in progress'.
- A revision request is never 'please resend' — it names the tooth, the surface and the reason.
- Re-uploaded scans return to the top of the review queue rather than the back of it.
- Your case timeline records every review decision, so a disputed remake has an evidence trail.
3
Work has begun
In production
Design, manufacture and finishing, recorded to the case as it happens.
- Your practice
- Track progress in the dashboard. Message the bench team on the case directly if the plan changes.
- The laboratory
- The case is designed, nested, milled or printed, finished, and photographed. Material lot numbers are recorded against the case as it goes.
- The promised completion date is set when production starts, and it does not move without a message explaining why.
- Every stage is written to the case as it is reached, with the date it happened.
- Material batch traceability is captured here, which is what makes the materials record real rather than decorative.
4
Completed
Completed
Finished, verified and photographed — visible to you before it leaves the building.
- Your practice
- Review the QC photographs in your dashboard. If something is not right, say so before it ships.
- The laboratory
- Fit is verified against the design, occlusion is checked on the model, the case is photographed under controlled light and every patient-contact material is recorded to the case by manufacturer, product and lot.
- Seeing the finished work before dispatch is the single cheapest remake-prevention measure that exists.
- The materials record — every patient-contact material, by manufacturer and lot — is written to the case record at this point, and the case cannot be dispatched until it is.
- Cases completed ahead of schedule ship early rather than waiting for the promised date.
5
Shipped, with tracking
Shipped
Dispatched by express courier, with the carrier and tracking number written to the case at dispatch.
- Your practice
- Follow the shipment from the case page. Your front desk can give the patient a real arrival date.
- The laboratory
- The case is packed, dispatched by express courier, and the carrier and tracking number are written to the case record.
- The tracking number lives on the case, not in an email someone has to find.
- The pouch label names the laboratory that made the case; the materials and the point of origin are on the case record in your portal.
- The courier's estimated arrival is written to the case at dispatch and shown on the stage bar, so the front desk can book the seat appointment against a date rather than a hope.
6
Delivered
Delivered
The case is confirmed received at your practice, and the promise it was sent against is settled on the record.
- Your practice
- Confirm receipt from the case page. That one click is what closes the loop and what a warranty claim is measured from.
- The laboratory
- Delivery is written to the case, the promised date is reconciled against what actually happened, and the case moves into your history.
- A case that arrived early is recorded as early. The old portal compared every promised date against today's date forever, so a case delivered four days ahead of schedule read as five days overdue a week later.
- Delivery is the last stage of the bar rather than a footnote on the one before it, because it is the only stage the patient in the chair is waiting on.
- The warranty clock starts here, on a date both sides can see.
The step nobody else names
Step two exists because most remakes are decided before production starts.
An unreadable margin, a missing opposing arch, a bite registration that does not seat. Every laboratory finds these. Most find them quietly, work around them, and let you discover the consequence in the chair. We stop the case, tell you which tooth and which surface, and put the rescan at the front of the queue.
The portal
One platform. Three doors.
Your practice, our bench and our administration each see the same case through a different door — and your practice's door opens onto your practice's work alone.
Client dashboard
Your practice
Your own private workspace. Start cases, upload scans, watch each one move through the six stages, message the bench team, and pull your full case history whenever you need it. Every practice is walled off from every other — your cases are yours alone.
- Your own logins, per team member
- Case history and search across every restoration you have sent
- Notifications the moment a case needs you
- Tracking numbers, QC photographs and materials records on every case
Production dashboard
The laboratory
The bench view. Incoming scans arrive on the review desk, get approved or returned with specifics, and move through production to dispatch — each transition writing to the case timeline your practice can see.
- Review queue with scan approval and structured revision requests
- Production board across every open case
- Technician assignment and internal notes
- Dispatch with carrier and tracking capture
Admin dashboard
Administration
Full oversight. Every practice, every user, every case, every event — plus the commercial view: throughput, turnaround, revision rates and the accounts that drive them.
- Approve new practices and provision their logins
- Complete case visibility across all accounts
- Turnaround, revision-rate and volume analytics
- Full audit log of every action taken on the platform
Every practice is walled off from every other.
Each practice gets its own account, its own logins per team member, and its own isolated case history. No shared inbox, no cross-visibility, no chance of one practice seeing another's patients. It is enforced in the data layer, not in the interface.
Quality & compliance
Everything we claim here, you can ask us to prove.
A custom-made restoration sits on a regulatory pathway most practices have never had explained to them. Here is what the law actually asks of a laboratory, and what we do about it.
United States
FDAFD&C Act · 21 CFR Parts 820 & 872
A restoration is a custom device, not a product
Every case is made for one named patient, to the written prescription of a licensed dentist, and is not offered for general sale. That is what places it on the custom-device pathway rather than the 510(k) pathway — a crown is not cleared, it is prescribed. The prescription is the legal foundation of the whole case, which is why the portal will not open one without it.
Custom does not mean unregulated
The custom-device pathway exempts a device from premarket clearance. It exempts nobody from quality systems, labelling, traceability, complaint handling or adverse-event reporting. The FDA has made that point forcefully against laboratories that treated the exemption as a blanket one, and it is why our quality system is built on the requirements of 21 CFR Part 820 whether or not a registration is required of us.
Travels with every case
- Pouch label naming the laboratory that made the case
- Case number, traceable to the full record in your portal
- The prescribing dentist and the patient reference on the case
Where your case is made
Your work is manufactured by Lumina Dental Laboratory, in Egypt. We would rather you read that here than find it on a packing slip.
Benchside is not a bench with a website — it is a named bench, a fixed standard and a record you can audit. It is the only bench we use: we are not shopping your case to whoever is cheapest this week. We set the specification, every case passes a named review stage before it enters production, and we carry the warranty ourselves. How that is governed.
The volume ladder
A better rate is a rule, not a negotiation.
Send more work and the rate improves on a published ladder. You do not have to ask for it, and you will not be quoted one figure while the practice down the road is quoted another. Your own rates are quoted to your account in writing.
| Tier | Units a month | Off list |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | From the first case | List |
| Volume | 200+ | 8% |
| Partner | 500+ | 16% |
- 18 products quoted by the bench and makeable today
- Delivered duty paid — shipping is ours, not a line at the end
- Models, dies and articulation included, never itemised afterwards
- No account minimums, no volume commitments, no annual contracts
Warranty & remakes
If it is our fault, it is our cost. Stated plainly, in advance.
LifetimeMonolithic zirconia crowns and bridges +2 more
7 yearsLayered zirconia crowns and bridges +4 more
5 yearsFull-cast restorations +1 more
3 yearsFull-arch fixed prostheses
1 yearComplete dentures +2 more
- Remakes get priority, not the back of the queue. A warranty remake enters production ahead of new work, on the same day it is authorised.
- We pay the freight both ways. Return shipping and re-delivery on a covered remake are ours, anywhere in the US.
- One decision, made quickly. Remake claims are answered within one working day. No claims process, no forms, no escalation ladder.
- The evidence already exists. Your case timeline holds the scans we received, the review decision we made and the QC photographs we took. Disputes are resolved by looking, not by arguing.
Technology
Scanner-agnostic by design.
Two CAD platforms rather than one, a mill floor and a print floor, and an intake that opens whatever your scanner exports. If a file cannot be worked, you hear it in the review window — not on the delivery date.
Intake
We are scanner-agnostic. If your system can export it, we can open it — and if it cannot, we will tell you inside the review window rather than three days later.
- Intraoral scan ingestion
- 3Shape TRIOS · Dentsply Sirona Primescan / CEREC · Align iTero · Medit · Planmeca · Carestream
- CBCT integration
- DICOM
Design
Two design platforms, not one — so a case is designed in whichever environment gives the better result rather than whichever we happen to own.
- CAD
- exocad DentalCAD · 3Shape Dental System
- Smile design
- exocad SmileCreator
- Implant planning
- exocad · 3Shape Implant Studio
Manufacture
Five-axis wet and dry milling alongside a print floor, so each restoration is made by the process that suits its material rather than the one that suits our schedule.
- Milling
- imes-icore · VHF · Amann Girrbach · Roland DGA
- Additive
- SprintRay · Formlabs · Asiga
- Sintering & pressing
- Dekema · Ivoclar Programat
Verification
Nothing ships on the assumption that the file was right. Every unit is checked against the design it came from.
- Digital fit verification
- Design-to-scan comparison
- Model verification
- Printed working models
- Photographic QC
- Calibrated shade photography
Groups and multi-site practices
Several offices, one account — with each site’s own delivery address and its own approval path.
Up to 5 locations can be listed on a single application, and every case records which office it belongs to. Tell us how your group is organised and we will set it up that way rather than asking you to work around it.
Open an account
Send us one case. Watch it move through all six steps.
Most accounts are live within one working day. Your first case can be submitted the moment you sign in — and it is reviewed within 24 hours, or you are told why.