Group Function: Perfect Posterior Contacts with the Garrison Quad Matrix

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[00:01:30] first you take a group of very dental people then you add some interesting topics and a few microphones finally add some laughs and collegial good cheer and you get the group function podcast very dental people welcome to another episode of the group function podcast today i have two guests joining me one of them's been on the show before he is a he's he's from garrison his name is kevin walbert kevin how are you doing hey doing good today dr me really really well it's been a

[00:01:59] busy week yeah my goodness yeah it has been i feel like all these weeks are busy weeks now i i don't know exactly how that happened how how did january become i don't get it i don't get it but anyhow kevin kevin is with garrison we had him on to talk about uh a new curing light of a few months back or a couple months back and it just so happens one of them landed in my office yesterday so i can't wait to i don't know this week right yeah exactly i haven't literally it's sitting on the charger i've

[00:02:26] not had a chance to use it yet but i will i will give reports my friends i'll give reports also joining us uh someone new to the podcast dr matt burton matt how are you doing i'm great alan thanks for having me so matt is a dentist in frankfurt illinois is that i get that right that's correct okay okay he's got he's got actually kind of an interesting story um i i want to tell i want you to tell me

[00:02:51] matt how did you become the i'm i'm saying this in quotes just so he realized how did you become the white fillings expert in your office that was a good story i want to hear this so it's it's uh it's it's not it's not earned like i said you got to be careful what you tell alan i guess and so um i was telling the story and i'll share it with you all so i graduated uic uh 16 years ago and

[00:03:16] walked into this awesome general practice that was 60 years old at the time and really good two really good dentists before and but the dentist i was taking over for you know had no real interest in diving into posterior composites he knew that it was that it was coming but his generation was kind of like i've read too many bad things i don't want to do it and so the like the second day i'm his associate you know he's he's he's walking into these rooms and and he would introduce me he's

[00:03:46] like this is dr burton and ally he's going to be your dentist and he's a white filling expert and i had logged maybe six posterior composites and um it was in that moment that i was branded that but i it was not earned and so i love that in dentistry you know what an expert is in dentistry an expert is someone from 50 miles away who has slides that's the expert so that that's how you become a

[00:04:13] white fillings expert by being the guy that will do them in in the office in a lot of cases so trial by fire i do have to laugh too because i mean like you graduated right around the time when when there was a tipping point where i think the comfort level with posterior composites in particular got better kevin might be able to speak to this like there were there were a group of dentists that maybe had been practicing since the 60s or 70s that that came on to composite pretty strong but they sort of

[00:04:42] treated it like the the material that they were most used to which would be amalgam kevin can you vouch for that is that sort of what you guys noticed at garrison is that maybe what launched garrison for crying out loud absolutely well you know that's kind of the story of of edgar uh garrison and his son john you know edgar practiced for 50 years and and uh uh was not a huge proponent of

[00:05:06] amalgam it was just it was all there was right and and uh he had taken some courses back in the day and and finding out some of the health you know potential health concerns of amalgam so he made a decision you know early on in the in the you know mid 90s that hey i'm gonna i'm gonna move away from amalgam and i'm gonna do composites so then he ran into the issue of getting a tight contact

[00:05:33] that's what that's what kicked us off right the whole garrison crew back uh you know 96 97 that's really that's interesting and of course any general dentist knows that if you want to wreck uh wreck any kind of efficiency or any kind of appointment you you place opposed to your composite and you realize the contact is light and you yeah yeah the whole matt and i have way is behind by a half hour oh yeah yeah it kind of is and the other thing is is like matt knows this

[00:06:00] story because like what about it's one thing when the contact is like wide open like visually open it's another thing when the contact is like it's there and you're trying to convince yourself it's there enough and yeah you're flossing at a different angle you're like yeah exactly give me the wide floss exactly this it snaps yeah and and it's worth mentioning i've i've i still struggle with this on occasion and it's worth mentioning i have to be like the little angel on

[00:06:27] my shoulder saying look you're going to redo this now or you're going to redo this later might as well do it now they're numb and they're here because the reality is is those kind i am convinced that if there is one thing in the world that makes a restoration livable and and comfortable is uh the floss contact i mean if it if it is a food impaction first off i mean it's prone to decay it's prone to perio problems but also the patient's going to mention to you every time you see them in hygiene

[00:06:52] for the rest of your life stuck in there exactly exactly and why is it that they tell you exactly what it is that gets stuck in there yeah oh yeah or better or better you get to see for yourself you get to find out yeah right oh you had roast beef five days ago yeah apparently an italian sub i see so yeah no that's real that's real so i mean part of the reason we're talking today is is

[00:07:18] is about context i mean part of the reason garrison exists is posterior composite composite contacts but um we're talking about a new matrix system that garrison is garrison is this rolling out in chicago is that what i understand or is it already out this rolled out wednesday wednesday so it was a busy week it was wednesday okay so yep okay i i've had a chance to play with it for like a couple weeks now and i think matt it probably is it has a lot more history with it so i i'm gonna the the the product

[00:07:47] is called the quad matrix system and it's and it's uh i might as well let you guys describe it who wants to jump in here and first off what's the problem we're trying to solve with the quad matrix who wants to take that yeah that's that's all matt yeah so you intro this perfectly and organically and you're talking about you know getting these contacts and all this stuff and so i started to notice it so this

[00:08:12] project has been eight and a half years in the making oh wow and um i started to notice that as i was picking up speed in my office that i was literally faster at crom preps yeah than i was and better than i was at posterior direct restorations and at but at the same time i knew i'm not i can't crown everything right and i wasn't interested in doing ceramic onlays i'm like this is this takes too long like i have to charge people way too much money for what should be a white filling this is this is crazy

[00:08:41] and so in that era that i was going through my career you know and how it was interesting when i graduated is like our demand on composite evolved so fast right so we went from barely knowing how to use it you know kind of like technique sensitive contact situations to all of a sudden like it has to fit in every every hole that we open right so you take out all the analgams and the patient's like i want a white filling you're like perfect and then you get in there you're like oh my gosh like

[00:09:11] yeah what am i going to do um and so i had these i had a lower mandibular 28 and 29 kind of a wide embrasure case um and those are tough teeth right yeah but i looked at it on the x-ray and i'm like and that was my old school diagnosis right just look at the x-ray it's like oh they're not big this is going to be no problem oh yeah like three hours later i'm i'm dying i had to cancel a patient

[00:09:36] right yeah and i've been there i know and i go home and it was a friday and i go home and i'm just defeated as a human and my wife's like how was your day i'm like how was yours let's start with yours you know yeah and so i just started to him and haul and think like there has to be a better way and so i started breaking down the procedure and saying like i have i own every ring no demand right i have every system and it doesn't matter

[00:10:01] what i put in there you know it wasn't going to work and so i started to break down the components i'm like all right in my head like looking like okay i had the prep could i have changed something on that not really right cavity sets the boundaries on that i got to chase it so that's out um has something to do with it but not doesn't control it so then i'm like when i put my matrix bands in everything was fine still right and then when i got to the wedge that's when that's

[00:10:29] when the house of cards starts to fall right we get the wedge in there and sometimes it just goes in and we got it and we're good but a lot of times when we get in these extraordinary situations which is what i find myself in a lot yeah then all of a sudden i'm gonna stop you for a second i'm gonna stop it for a second there just the extraordinary situations also common situations the bugger of it is is that a lot of times it's like you would think that most of the time this is it's not most

[00:10:56] of the time it's most of the time you've got a weird situation it's real i mean and and i know that that's i i experienced that in endo it seems like a lot but the reality is is that i feel like i think contacts are are there's so many different kinds and i don't think i think they're all kind of special i guess what i'm saying but i'm sorry anyhow you're you were going no no so when we put the wedge in that's when things would change and that's when you would you know our matrix bands

[00:11:21] would kink or it would topple over or and we would know that when we put that ring on we're like this isn't going to work but i'm going to put the ring on anyway and i'm going to try yes and and give it a shot and so i started to understand that maybe the wedge was a problem you know in the design of the wedge and so that's when i came up with the splitting the splitting design and i started prototyping those in office and and i noticed the difference right away in my ability to to achieve

[00:11:49] these extraordinary or common situations um and then i go to you know then i started my own company because i wanted to you know start to spread the word because i was actually noticing differences and i was in new york my wife and i were there for a weekend and so she's you know i'm like i'm like i figured this thing out in my office it's great i'm taking wave wedges from trio and i'm cutting them with a scalpel blade to make them split open and i'm like i'm like kristen this is like a game changer

[00:12:17] you know like i can do all these fillings now and it's awesome and we're at a bar she looks at me she's like well you have to tell someone about this yeah so i blame all of this on her because i had i was just happy that i was able to do it right yeah yeah and so then it started i made my own company for my own company started making products and i was kind of spreading that idea of like hey we have a wedge issue right and here's here's how you can fix it um by getting the wedge to like sit lower

[00:12:47] in the embrasure and get into those subgingival areas and curve around our matrix bands instead of fighting the matrix band and so i was teaching this course in vegas on the trade show floor at smile con and i think it was 2021 and uh vegas was a ghost town at that time right i mean the pools were like it was like no one had been there since covid me it might have even been 2020 i think it was 2020 and so i'm in this hotel room and my flight was delayed because southwest pilots went on strike the

[00:13:17] night before it was like chaos right so i have like two hours of sleep i teach my first course ever and i'm in the crowd and i'm teaching about this thing that i invented called the versa wedge and we get to the end and at the time when i was testing the versa wedge it actually was it was better it worked well with like the paladin triodent system and so and i was a i was a i've been a paladin triodent user for a long time which is what makes the story even more unique and and i'm in the crowd

[00:13:44] and or i'm i'm teaching and i didn't know that tom garrison's in the crowd i have no idea who tom garrison is yeah and uh somebody raises their hands looking daggers at you as you're talking about how it is yeah exactly son of a one you felt the flaming eyeballs from the distance i'm sure i'm sure so someone raises their hand and they say does your wedge work with garrison's systems and i was like well i i actually i i don't i haven't really tested it i don't use garrison i recommend using

[00:14:13] the others them's fighting words yeah so about a year later we meet at a trade show and he comes to my booth and he's talking to me because they're kind of trying to solve the same problem and he knows that i'm looking to solve the same problem sure and so we like chit chat at the booth for a couple hours and i wish someone would have taken a picture because that was where all this was born so yeah we're talking we're having a beer for you know a couple hours and by the end of the conversation i think kevin was there too when it was going on and you know we were kind of spitting

[00:14:42] spitballing ideas back and forth you know like we should make this work we you know like we have similar goals here and you know we get done with the conversation and tom's like we'll be in touch you know we change numbers and he looks at me he's like i gotta say one thing though and i was like yeah he's like i was in your i was at that course at smile con i watched you and and i i kind of immediately had like a cold sweat go over my body what did i say you know he was like really hurt my

[00:15:07] feelings that you uh that you told them that you didn't recommend and i'm like tom it'll never happen again that's hilarious all of this thing is super funny golden yeah okay so so the versa wedge this is the the the system the quad system was kind of started with the versa wedge which is i'll put a link to i'll get a photo of it or whatever because it's like the original kind of split wedge um it's funny i i love the fact that you you basically were taking wedges and splitting

[00:15:34] them with a scalpel because that's like the most dentist thing it's totally dentist right that's that's that's exactly what we would do let's try this and then and then stuff comes of it so so the so tell me why does a split wedge work better for you why why why is why split wedge so all the wedges before i was noticing that what would get in our way when we would get in these common situations or extraordinary situations it wasn't the tooth prep or anything it was the tissue

[00:16:02] right it was the papilla that was what was getting in our way whether you would wedge it over you know and try to push it out of the way like it was always interfering um with the wedge and at the most critical point which is the gingival margin yeah right so if that point is not sealed and if your restoration is not starting to contour off that point immediately then you're not going

[00:16:27] to get a contact area and you're not going to get a contact so that point is like super critical and when i started to split the wedges what i noticed was that it simply allowed the papilla to work with the wedge right instead of instead of fighting it let's dance with it right fine let's let's let it let's let it use its own pressure put back pressure against the matrix and just let everything sit in harmony um and then when i hooked up with garrison then we took it to the next level and we said

[00:16:56] all right let's actually find a way to get a ring to interact with this and so back to the original story it was like we dissected the matrix system and we said okay what's good about matrix bands what can't they do what's good about wedges how could they be improved and then third what have we learned about rings in the past and what's good about them you know and what could we improve and what we found was that the wedge could be improved and that the ring if i you know when i'm on instagram i see a lot

[00:17:26] of docs using those gen one garrison rings you know like those old school metal times no i had them i still have beautiful work right i mean they're they're doing great with those things and it's that one you know the lingual wall or the buckle wall sometimes just needs it needs like something to go all the way in the embrasure and so we took the two best things gen one garrison ring and then we took strategy and we kind of like melted them together and we said okay on one side we have this

[00:17:54] driver tip which is a bar and on the other side we have our traditional you know tunnel that'll go over the wedge handle so you know those doctors that are using those tines those old school tines they no longer have to fuss with where to put the ring on the on the handle side of the wedge or the thick part of the wedge and then we got everything to kind of like work together because there was a really cool article that came out from bdj and i think it was in 2022 or 2023 and there are still

[00:18:20] people doing research on composites so imagine that they're important right and they said that they found an interesting fact and they said that actually a lot of composite call it failures and they're marking failures by like open contacts port contours all these things right that it actually came from the fact that the wedge and the ring were working against each other against each other yes i would agree with that too anyone who's anyone who's anyone who's used a lot of these sometimes

[00:18:49] sometimes it's perfect but sometimes you're like man it's not quite there and i i want to describe a little bit what if you can imagine first off i'm assuming that most of the time the split needs to go to the lingual or palatal is that that's that's generally when i'm using them i'm not finding that's what i'm doing it's the the split part goes to the palatal typically um or the lingual now what's interesting about the wedge or the rings that they've made is they've got basically

[00:19:15] on that the side that's going to engage the split has basically it's an axe handle it basically goes right between the two splits and adapts them really solidly like i don't know how else to describe it other than that like the story is the wedge is built to work with this particular ring this ring is not a ring you're going to use without these wedges like it would not it's just not going to

[00:19:40] work with a with an the wedge kind of has to be split but once you put that little axe handle in there you literally are the the wedge from that palatal all the way around to the you know to the adapts really strongly like it's it's it's kind of shocking and and what i no one here is going to appreciate this but what i when i first put i'm like why the hell didn't we think of this like years ago it makes it does make perfect sense like we're because the story is a lot of times you're

[00:20:07] like you can't quite get you know garrison has done a great job to make these kind of soft rubbery perfect adaptation and and a lot of times you can get it but sometimes you can't because you're kind of fighting against basically you're making space for the wedge within the ring these these rings are like no there is no space the space is i'm going smack into it to to and it really makes a ton of sense it makes a ton of sense and i'm like wow i don't know why we were kind of fighting that part of it for so

[00:20:37] long so now we're looking at basically a split wedge that allows for the ring to adapt right smack in the middle of it it's brilliant it's for it's tough audio podcast it's a little hard to describe we'll get some pictures in there but the reality is is that yeah yeah what the reality is exactly the reality is it's it really it fits in i mean how many times have you have you had to get that ring you know four or five different times trying to get the ring just right on it you don't really

[00:21:06] have to do that here because the way basically put the axe handle into the wedge into the split that's what you do and it pretty much nails it so okay knowing that i didn't invent this matt am i getting it right you nailed it i mean axe handle we should have had him on the marketing team oh yeah they always say that afterwards don't they well we spent a lot of time okay so with the chicago midwinter i'm gonna dress like a lumberjack and i'll just carry it'll be perfect

[00:21:37] so i mean it is it is really cool i i will say this you guys have kind of marketed this for the perfect back-to-back um you know because i will tell you i rarely do back-to-back composites for the sheer fact that like i said i i don't want to have to go back and do another uh to to fix the contact if it's light you know it happens sometimes it doesn't happen very often but but part of it is like i i haven't done it back-to-back but you guys are basically marketing this is a back-to-back

[00:22:04] i'm going to tell you i've done i don't think i've used it back-to-back yet i haven't had it long enough that i've tried that i'll have a chance to try it but it works awesome it works fantastic like your contact is so strong you might have to lighten it with with everyone that i've done so far so i'm very i'm very excited for you so okay so knowing that's the case tell me about your concept of back-to-back and did you do anything with the actual matrix to change it or or is that i mean or does it work with

[00:22:31] multiple matrices within the garrison world or what yeah so what we did was the back-to-back theory or the back-to-back solution kind of happened organically and that was the really cool thing about this whole project is that this whole project came from a place of necessity right so i started this doing this because i had a problem in my office garrison started doing this 25 years ago because their dentist had problems in their office right doing this and then we both kind of met in the

[00:22:59] middle but the whole thing's been organic and when we when i started to notice the benefits of having a wedge that was split in half the the fifth thing that came to mind was that wow in back-to-back situations which i wouldn't do either i would do one at a time you know for the longest time um because that's kind of how we were told to do it um because a lot of systems would fall short right and it would be yep fingers crossed and but at the same time there was plenty of situations where i'm getting

[00:23:27] these young kids and i'm doing like pretty pretty minimal prep stuff and i'm like there's no reason that i need to step this out now when i get into like two mammoth amalgams yeah yeah maybe i'm going to step back you know um but a lot of cases that i had i'm like they should they should go same time so the splitting wedge and then the axe handle that goes in the middle right actually it's an axe head let's be honest we need to be graphic about this it's the axe people it's not the handle the driver

[00:23:55] tip the exactly the driver fair enough yes you would get dual seal right so that was like whoa hold on like we can actually we can actually wedge both teeth going in two different directions at the same time and then we started to notice that and this was again organic but i was trying to figure out why so i started doing back-to-backs at the same time leaving enough time to to fail during prototype

[00:24:22] and but i would take everything out i'm like wow like this is working and so immediately i'm like well it's not magic why why is this happening and the biggest thing is that when those wedges are sitting low and that ring comes in and the whole system wants to orient itself and you may notice that when you when you set it in like the rings before would kind of want to tilt in certain directions based on where they were engaging but that driver tip just lines it right up in the middle

[00:24:50] it forces the ring to orient itself perfectly and when you have all the matrix bands not tilting in either direction or wobbling or anything and everything's stable and it's held stable then everything is possible at that point and what we were struggling with before was stability and contour and you know there's a lot of ring separation theories that are going on like we can't separate it enough and it's like well that's what we've been told you know and it's not actually been i don't know if anyone's

[00:25:19] actually proven that but if you stabilize it and you hold everything still and you have that situation ready to go then it gives you the opportunity to do these back-to-backs and that was really eye-opening um for us and we tested the daylights out of this you know oh man i mean we tested it there was like 120 dentists 2500 restorations oh wow we we took it through the ringer um because it was a bold 800

[00:25:44] 800 back-to-back and 800 back-to-backs that has been tested on and um and it was really it was really eye-opening it was really cool and really rewarding to see that that come back and say oh my gosh like this thing this thing actually works and so um that could you tell them you know when we're talking about simultaneous back-to-backs we're literally talking about etching bonding and filling

[00:26:14] simultaneously yeah etching bonding filling one and then etching bonding filling the other but literally simultaneously yeah and getting the whole thing set up yeah and it just streamlines efficiency you know and um but we're one of the we're creatures that we we're we want to be efficient we want to be fast but we also are incredible perfectionists you know and so that was where garrison and i really like we lined on that right where it's like if we're gonna you know we're gonna

[00:26:42] create something that actually helps that actually does this job and creates perfection and creates efficiency um all at the same time so not having to do two bonding steps not having to take a bunch of you know everything in and out and do all this um and being able to have control the situation and have confidence and when you're walking in to these situations because like you said if you we were talking earlier it's like if you want to wrench a schedule in a day it's like just sprinkle in a

[00:27:10] you know three composite posterior back you know back-to-back restorations in the middle or at the end um and that's how we used to feel and now it's just you know now it's the system drives that that's it's interesting you say that i mean and that is true um i probably schedule longer for for you know quadrants of composite for the sheer fact that i know i was going to do them one at a time and i was going to you know and it just just out of habit you know because you like you said it's

[00:27:38] in your mind you're like man just all it's going to take is one of those to mess me up and it's going to take me longer so that this is this is pretty cool now i gotta say i'm not a scientist i don't know that there's any way to measure this in a clinical situation i suspect kevin knows how to measure this in reality but i can't help but think that that axe head going into the split wedge gives a lot of separation pressure i don't know if if that's a i don't know if it's more or not i can't but i to my feel when i was using it it definitely felt like i'm like oh i'm getting a lot

[00:28:07] of separation here so kevin can you speak to that at all yeah the you know i i've not been able to quantify it the we've got some incredibly fancy custom built uh machines robotic machines to measure separating force you know on a on a what i would call a traditional ring setup right yep um

[00:28:29] but because this system is actually integrating the wedge and the ring and and using the best parts of both of those to amp up the separating the our our machine isn't set up to do that so i've not been able to quantify it but certainly when you see it if you go out on the garrison website you'll look at

[00:28:53] how this thing interacts how the uh the you know the driver tip and the wedge interacts you can see that you are you are driving that separating force at exactly the right spot critical you know and so i i i have to believe that it it can't help but produce more separating force and that is definitely the report from the field all these docs that we had trial at you know thousands

[00:29:22] of restorations and they're like oh my god yeah it's i mean it's plausible it's plausible just because like even if you're at okay anyone's going to midwinter you need to go by garrison and just look at the system put and honestly even even seeing it probably doesn't do it justice to like actually feeling it when that thing drives into the to the wedge it's nuts like you're like oh my gosh this is really this is serious and and it is very kind of makes perfect sense uh just because for all the time

[00:29:52] you've been using those rings you've been trying to get it to go over the wedge just right you know fit right over the wedge and now you're not doing that you're trying to get it to smash right into the wedge which is which is totally different than what you're used to and it really it's very plausible that you're putting more pressure because that ring can then go okay i'm putting the force exactly where i need it to be instead of okay i'm not knocking the wedge out of the way that's it's very interesting it's conceptually you just can't beat it so it's like the split wedge

[00:30:18] was one thing but then actually making a ring that fits into that split in the right way is is the whole i mean it's a whole different way of looking at this stuff the other thing that's worth mentioning there's more rings because because there's different quadrants you know you've got a ring that works on the upper left and the lower right and and so you you kind of it's custom to the situation and frankly you need all of them out on the tray because it's hard to know which one you're going to use till you're placing it i can say that with experience yeah that that is the one caveat that

[00:30:47] because we have a driver tip on one side it's either on the right side of the ring or the left side of the ring that um there is a there's a little piece of a learning curve right it's not it's not like strategy 2.0 it is a completely different uh technique and and you need to make a metal adjustment go okay i need to instead of wedging from the lingual towards the buckle so the fat part

[00:31:15] of the wedge is on the lingual i'm going to switch that around now i'm going to wedge from the buckle to the lingual so my split tip is over there and now i actually have to pay attention to which ring i'm going to place yep and so with that in mind knowing that for the first time in you know 20 some years that we actually have a little change in technique we've spent a huge amount of effort in developing

[00:31:41] additional uh support materials yeah that are included in the kit you know the chart there's a chart in there that helps you to identify where where the best place the rings um you know there's a quad resource center on the website with cases and gosh we we've been working matt really hard yeah yeah yeah we went to school on that and and you know you brought up a good point alan you were

[00:32:07] like it's customized you know and so that's that's what it is you know and with that customization and with that that i guess just customization for that just comes a little bit of a different approach and if you've used a ring and a wedge which almost every dentist has then this is going to be familiar you know and so it's not like okay it's a whole new it's a whole new door but it's just a different

[00:32:31] way to say okay i'm going to pause for a second and i'm going to think right in this moment and that second or two is going to save me how many minutes finishing polishing or redoing yeah filling at the end and and the thing is you said it it kind of tells you where to go you know like it'll it'll draw the map for you all you have to do is walk the line with it um and the learning curves have been

[00:32:56] had been fast but to kevin's point we we went to work on that and we were like all right let's this thing really works it's a huge advantage let's let's make this as simple as possible um but at the same time we didn't want to take away from what the system was doing you know and say well it's it's weird to have one tip one way and another tip the other way because that's that's kind of the beauty of this thing and yeah and it's it's a little bit of time on the front end and it saves gobs

[00:33:22] of time on the back end every dentist who use who's used rings in a wedge in a matrix if they get their hands on this for a second it will make sense to them and and then clinically you're going to grab the wrong ring sometimes when you're first using it because you're good but it's so have all the rings out that's the easiest thing but i i'm going to say this too like if you the you need to have the garrison has an instrument that that i mean probably there's lots of instruments out there

[00:33:48] to to open and you can use a rubber dam retainer thing but you need to use the garrison to make sure it opens wide enough well i have a four garrison once around yeah the the ring forceps are very specific um and i mean it's worth having in your kit you'll be frustrated the problem with most uh rubber dam um clamp placement instruments they don't open wide enough they're they're also not quite as sturdy as those but but they don't open it like just just once don't have one of those around and try it with

[00:34:15] the wrong forcep and you'll be saying bad words and your assistant will be regretful it's it's that there's just no control of the ring it can it can move around on the forceps and and that's one of the critical aspects you need to have you know that ring locked in place on that forcep so you've got absolute control it makes placement radically easy that's the first thing somebody comes calls us up you know and we actually have live customer service people by the way

[00:34:42] um so they call us up and they go i'm having trouble you know the first question out of our customer service reps mouths is what forceps are you using yeah interesting nine times out of ten they're trying to put it on with a rubber dam clamp forceps it's like listen man you're you're just you're killing yourself yeah willing yourself it's i mean it's it's like having the wrong size saw when you're cutting a tree or something like that you know you might you might be able to make it work but man it's gonna take you a while and i'm spoiled because i have a bunch of those forceps around

[00:35:11] now interestingly too every ring you know they they don't last forever i mean if you use the rings long enough they won't have as much so but but with this kit it's likely you're gonna they're gonna last twice as long because you they don't work in every like like you're gonna use you know different rings for different situations so the the kit is very well designed it's not overkill um but it's got all the stuff you need that or at least the kit that ended up on my desk it's very it's very cool i will

[00:35:39] say this too the um the split wedges are easy to place like there's not like when you get the right first off you can go to a maybe a bigger size than you think you'll need and it'll still go to place pretty easily like some some wedges some wedges are like nope not doing this you know you get like you're trying to my classic thing is when i'm when i'm prepping a lot of times i'm going to get a wedge in there to pre-wedge to open that contact and then i try and go up to the next size wedge

[00:36:06] uh to when i'm actually restoring and a lot of times that next size wedge is like no this is not happening but i will tell you that these wedges go in really easily so the separation pressure comes with that axe head coming in there and separating that's that's the so you're probably not if you're going to pre-wedge to get those teeth apart you're not going to use a split wedge for that because you're not going to get the same kind of pressure as you would with just a standard wedge or i mean garrison has a million different kinds of wedges you could use for that but the reality is

[00:36:34] these wedges go to place much easier than you're used to with that would you agree with me on that matt yeah it's it's it's a little creepy you're like oh that was awfully easy maybe i need the next size up you're like is it too easy because we've you know we've had this thing ingrained when i was you know when i was in school to get the contact it was with you're bracing the patient's head get a little get a little hammer and tap that thing in there yeah exactly there's no wonder we

[00:37:00] have crack two syndrome right exactly but you tell the patient you're gonna feel a little pressure here and then you're like pushing as hard as you can to wedge their teeth apart yeah exactly piercing the papilla and exactly you know a lot of it was with brute force and then you would pack you know and this thing is more it's a more delicate engineered you know approach and it's treating the things in there the delicate things in there with respect right and so the matrix band

[00:37:27] if whatever the matrix band is shaped like that's our filling shape that's what you're gonna get however it's shaped so if your wedge if you're wedging so hard in there and you're denting your matrix band then your filling is gonna have that like thing going on yeah and so having the wedge do what it needs to do and just elegantly slide in there um and that was one thing that we had and we saw that on feedback a lot of people were like i wasn't sure when i first put this in there because

[00:37:52] i'm used to you know a jackhammer to drive that thing in but it actually it it did its job and it did it very well and so actually you're used to you're used to with a wedge that being the thing that would stabilize your matrix and then you put them you put the ring on a stabilized matrix to put the pressure on well the reality is is that you're you put the pressure on with the matrix and that stabilizes the whole system it's kind of wild yeah i don't know alan if i could get a shameless plug in

[00:38:21] here but i've got matt and troy schmetting doing a course for us in march it's a live stream hands-on course where yeah they're going to get a the the participants are going to get a type it on they're going to get a cut down uh quad kit right uh the split wedges matrices they're going to get composite uh troy's going to be doing an anterior segment matt's going to be going over posterior segments

[00:38:51] and teaching people how to use the new quad system so that's on our this is like that this is like that you you take the course but you're in your own office using your own your own stuff which frankly as much as hands-on courses are great like you know like you mentioned uh we've done in cosmonet and also there is a little something interesting about using what you're actually going to be using in the real world that is a my friend dennis hartlieb started doing that where he'd send you the kit and do the course you're like oh wow this is in my operator so this makes

[00:39:20] it's makes the application is really that's a really smart move so when in march is that that's uh it's march 14th uh what's our course be 499 okay they get about 600 bucks worth of stuff that they get to keep right okay and uh four hours of ce okay so i'll put that in the show notes too so i i suspect people will be interested in that because all this this uh this hot split wedge talk but you can't unless you unless you can see the unless you can like actually put your hands on it

[00:39:49] it it won't affect you as much i'm like i said i'm gonna be at the midwinter here in a few weeks and i know garrison always has a big presence there so you know if people are going to the midwinter come come see me and we'll go over and look at it and you you put your hands on it and the light bulb will go off and you're gonna go oh i see what they're doing it does make a lot of sense i'll bet you want to type it on that axe head going into the split wedge is probably pretty dramatic

[00:40:14] that's my guess i don't know yeah yeah it is um you can really you know because you can pick that thing up and you can move it around you can really see what the the interaction that's taking place then you could loosen the teeth when no one's looking and it'll be like a periodontal it'll be great it'd be awesome but i i just i do feel like it it it's it's a cool system but but using it and you know actually putting your hands on it's gonna make a lot more sense yeah we you know we designed it too and you mentioned before you're like there's no way that it'll work with another

[00:40:45] i i beg you to try it with like if you have 3d fusion wedges and say you have like a big embrasure like a big wide one in just a weird situation you can actually go over the handle side of the wedge as you would before and then just use that driver tip and wrap the other wrap the wedge to the to the side that you're trying to get to okay interesting yeah so won't work with a wooden wedge yeah won't work with a wooden wedge no plastic wedge this thing is you know that's that's where

[00:41:12] this comes from that's why we gave you two different types of matrix bands you know we have like a dead soft in there and we have firms um based on what you're doing and because every situation is different right every class two is different they're not all the same none of them are the same well okay so tell me tell me where where are you using the dead soft versus the firm so the dead soft i typically use in like a non-adjacent uh back-to-back situation so in other words

[00:41:38] like just a single class two um so if i don't have back-to-backs i'll use a dead soft and the contrary it's just easier to get those in in those areas now when we get into back-to-backs a lot of times we you know we look down and we have there's more space to get things into um and so when you're placing those what what i discovered and what we discovered through trial is that when the two matrix bands are going in it's better to have a firm matrix band because they're kind of leaning on each other

[00:42:06] they're relying on each other if you have dead softs then they can kind of like dent each other yeah yeah you'll get it you'll get a goofy uh yeah a goofy orientation of your contact exactly yeah so those are the two the two different places firm okay back-to-backs okay that's it it's important to know a lot of people misunderstand they think that the firm matrix band is thicker yeah it is not thicker it is actually thinner it's actually thinner it's a different temper of stainless steel

[00:42:36] okay that that's the that's a critical part we get you know i don't want to use those are thicker no no they're not so interesting yeah the firm bands are 15 10 000 stick and uh they're actually you know the the coated dead soft are 16 10 000 so okay they're smidge thicker okay so are both of you guys going to be in chicago at the midwinter wouldn't miss it i wouldn't miss it okay so cool okay so i i

[00:43:03] want to i want to try and run into you guys when we're there just uh a garrison has garrison has cool stuff they have they have usually a pretty big presence there they'll obviously have this this system on display so you can play with it and they'll have all their their gazillion lm instruments available which which was that was that was was it last year or two years ago they're the big the big rollout where the lm folks yeah you guys i'm going to tell you what if you have hygienists looking for instruments which has been a chicago midwinter tradition for me

[00:43:31] forever they give me the list of the instruments that's where i buy my new instruments you don't give them the credit card to walk around with i mean i could i could but they typically typically they're typically i go to to chicago sometimes i would do that at the michigan meeting and no i don't give them the credit card for that but i will put the list out there but what's funny is you'll find i've used a lot of different companies instruments but now now you guys have the lm instruments which are really nice instruments and they're they're very european yeah uh and now

[00:44:00] you can actually see them in person so like every instrument they've got that giant rack of instruments you can see and put your hands on it so yeah they're like the tradition of getting my hygienist their new instruments will likely continue on in that that's garrison can help you out with that as well yeah that uh lm is the market leader in in uh uh europe uh you know hugh freed is the you know they do a great job with their with their outreach here in the u.s and they're the market leader here and um you know we took

[00:44:27] that line on last year and yeah it's it's uh um not just for hygiene instruments but also the restorative gosh the the coating on those restorative instruments is just crazy good and okay so here's the the funny thing is is anyone who was paying attention on you know to facebook dentistry or instagram dentistry you'd go on you'd see style italiano and all these composite

[00:44:54] major and they've they literally would make kits out of the lm instruments yeah and you couldn't get like you had to like finagle i was like oh i want that kid and so i'd go and i had to i patterson could like smuggle them through the southern border or something like that for for putting their people at great risk and you know i no i don't have any dental instruments in my trunk or anything like that it was hard to get them you had to do a lot of things for them and then all of a sudden you guys like oh yeah we're distributing them and i'm like well that was that was a nice change so yeah yeah yeah that's

[00:45:24] that's a it's a just a fantastic product line we're super happy to have it and um yeah they're uh i'm gonna try to in fact tell you what the uh the burton schmetting course yeah um you get two of the lm uh composite instruments with that kit nice so yeah it's decked out man all right all right so then here's here's the pitch if you're going to the midwinter go over to garrison or come find me

[00:45:51] in the podcasting booth and i'll go over with you and we'll we'll see if we can run into these guys and they can show this to you in person otherwise matt you got a chance in signing autographs exactly exactly yeah exactly the i can you sign a wedge because it's very small i feel like it's a really tiny pen yeah it's a very tiny marker maybe we'll get the we'll get the engineers on that we're like we need a big wedge like exactly giant wedge that we can sign or maybe they can take like selfies in

[00:46:17] front of a giant wedge something like that we got we got to do something for the midwinter people anyhow but you'll also have a chance to take uh take a course in your own office in march if you don't get to the midwinter yeah so i'm going to have all this stuff up in the show notes for people to check out awesome and this was great you guys i appreciate it i think we did as much justice to a three-dimensional thing on an audio podcast and i will put as much i'll put videos and photos of

[00:46:43] the stuff so you can look if you're listening to this on your your smartphone you'll be able to see something but go check it out in person i think you'll be it is it is a very compelling piece of kit for you to try and and matt and kevin thank you a ton for being on this was great thank you hey dr mead thanks for uh thanks for having us again yeah it's great you bet you bet we'll see you in a couple weeks all right sounds good