Certified Dental Technicians (CDT) must accumulate 12 hours of CE credits each year to renew their certification. These credits include:

• 1 hour regulatory systems education
• 6 hours scientific or technical education, and
• 5 hours of additional scientific, or professional development education.

CDT credits can be earned by completing technical courses, attending clinics, or completing online training courses or webinars.

Courses and clinics are hosted across the country throughout the year at participating laboratories, trade shows, and at companies such as Dentsply, Ivoclar Vivadent and Zahn, ...

I recently took both the comprehensive and specialty (written) exams, and passed. This feat could not have been accomplished without PTC (training). I’d like to share a little about the experience, and how useful PTC training and materials are to CDT exam preparation.

Dental technicians create crowns, bridges and dentures after receiving an impression of the patient’s teeth from a dentist.  There are three main departments in a dental lab: Crown & Bridge, Porcelain, and Dentures.  Some dental technicians attend a 2 year school before working in a dental lab.  However, the majority of training occurs on-the-job and through courses.

Average Annual Wage

The average annual income for dental technicians, as of May 2010, was $37,980.  This corresponds to ...

I’ve been thinking about average lately. In my over four decades of dental laboratory “experience” I’ve seen lots of average; average dentists, average patients, average dental techs, and average dental work.

I can find no clearly defined borders to average. Is it the middle 50%, the middle 25%, the middle 80%? In 1977, in a forward to Dr. Peter Dawson’s book Evaluation diagnosis and Treatment of Occlusal Problems, Dr. L.D. Pankey said about dentists, “It has been said, and ...

There are three main departments in a dental lab: Crown & Bridge, Porcelain, and Dentures. Many dental technicians only work in one department. This makes it easier to become a dental technician because you do not need to learn everything, only a specific skill or group of skills.

We’ve been hard at work developing the Contouring Posterior Bridges TechBook. The program has been available as a TechMaster module and we’re excited to add it to our TechBook series. The TechBook will features 52 contouring steps and over 180 images.

I can think of several reasons to pursue continuing education. You might want to learn a new skill or change careers; improve existing skills; increase your quality or productivity in your current job; learn a new technology in your field; prestige perhaps; you might want to learn to teach others, or maybe you only need CDT credits.

As PTC’s Director of Training, I have trained hundreds of lab owners, and key technicians over the past 10 years. I’m sure I learned as much from them as they did from me. As I reflect back on the many concepts that we taught and learned, 5 concepts come to mind as some of the most significant in changing our thought process from stuck to successful.

Of the many unique concepts in PTC’s “Training and Verification Systems”, I believe one of the most interesting is the primary plane. I first heard of primary planes when I was introduced to PTC in 1983. I thought it was a very clever idea/concept, but I must admit that for nearly 15 years I really didn’t understand the true purpose of it.

The New Year is typically a time when we reflect on the past year and, inevitably, thoughts go to what we wish we would have done better. The start of a new year is the Perfect time to put those thoughts into actions.