From a 'Cave' to a Castle

For 35 years, the staff at Flud Dental Lab in Tulsa, Oklahoma, affectionately dubbed their building "The Cave." Now, they're living the good life in a 12,000 sq.-ft. facility.

For 35 years, Flud Dental Lab was located in a building the staff affectionately dubbed "The Cave." As its name suggests, "the cave" was dark, dingy and crowded and there was a constant breakdown of heat, air and plumbing. Then, in 2006, the laboratory moved into a new, state-of-the-art, 12,000-sq.-ft. facility. "Coming from our old building, the new lab is like a castle," says Todd Smith, president of the National Dentex-member laboratory in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

National Dentex Senior Vice President, Arthur Champagne, visited the lab and took Smith on tours of other NDX facilities so he could get an idea of what would work best for Flud. Smith says he found a laboratory soulmate in Ideal Dental Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and patterned Flud's design after it....