Hindsight 2020: Reflections on Five Decades in Dentistry

Editor’s Note: Tom Bormes—a leading industry educator and a fervent supporter of dental laboratories—retired in 2016 from Preat, which he founded in 1980. Although it started out as a precision attachment company, his commitment to staying on the cutting edge has ensured Preat evolved with the industry, changing its core focus to implants and overdenture solutions and eventually becoming the first company in North America to offer SLM services for implant suprastructures.

“It’s hard to believe I’ve spent 53 years in the dental business; it doesn’t seem that long because it’s been so fun and I’ve made many great friends and memories,” he says. Here, he reminisces about his years in the industry, including the technological advances and changing dynamics he has witnessed:

Fresh out of the University of Minnesota in 1963, I joined the MF Patterson Dental Supply Co. in Minneapolis as a management...