geraerodriguez
Demo · Selected work · 02

How a dental lab actually makes (or doesn't make) money.

A live unit-economics model for an oral & maxillofacial lab. Move the sliders — pricing, volume, payroll, materials — and watch the P&L, capacity and operator's notes update.

Realistic demo data — not actual Dentrilab P&L100% client-side · no API callsBuilt by Gerardo Espinosa
Per-product inputs

Monolithic zirconia crown

$1,450 MXN
$130 MXN

Zirconia disc, ceramic powder, ingot, titanium base, etc.

1.4 h

CAD design (Exocad) + ceramics + finishing + makeup.

70 units
Fixed costs · monthly
$20,000 MXN
$65,000 MXN
4 FTE

Drives total skilled hours available per month.

$35,000 MXN
$2.00M

Mill, sinter oven, firing oven, 4 resin printers, 3 CAD workstations.

5 years
Monthly revenue
$574k
350 units · $1,640 MXN avg
Material cost
$85k
15% of revenue
Monthly EBITDA
$335k
After $153k fixed
EBITDA margin
58%
Breakeven: 110 units/mo
Capacity check
Skilled labor123%
868h demanded / 704h available · 4 techs × 8h × 22 days
Sintering oven8%
37h demanded / 440h available · 2 cycles/day, 45 units/cycle
Margin by SKU

Where each peso actually comes from

Monolithic zirconia crown

70 u/mo · $102k rev
After material only91% · $92k
Fully loaded82% · $83k

Stratified zirconia (Cerax Ceram)

70 u/mo · $116k rev
After material only87% · $100k
Fully loaded69% · $79k

Lithium disilicate crown

70 u/mo · $109k rev
After material only85% · $92k
Fully loaded74% · $81k

Lithium disilicate on implant

70 u/mo · $119k rev
After material only78% · $92k
Fully loaded65% · $77k

High-aesthetic veneer

70 u/mo · $130k rev
After material only86% · $111k
Fully loaded68% · $88k
Operator's notes

What the numbers are actually telling you

Critical

Production demand exceeds technician capacity

You need 868 skilled hours/month but only have 704. Either you're paying overtime (not modeled), missing the 24h SLA, or one of these numbers is optimistic.

Healthy

Strong EBITDA margin for a regulated service business

58% EBITDA margin. This is what funds the second location, the equipment upgrade, or the founder's first vacation.

Operator's note

Monolithic zirconia crown is your margin leader

82% fully-loaded margin vs 65% on Lithium disilicate on implant. If they're sold at the same volume, you're subsidizing one with the other — and your sales pitch should reflect that.

Operator's note

Pricing leverage worth testing

A 5% bump on Monolithic zirconia crown alone lifts monthly EBITDA by $5,075 MXN — assuming you don't lose volume. Most labs never test this because they think competitors will undercut. Run it as a 60-day experiment with one segment.

Operator's note

Operator's note — stratified zirconia is a margin trap

Looks premium at $1,650 MXN per unit, but per skilled hour it returns $355 MXN vs $851 MXN for monolithic. The ceramic application step is the hidden cost — your most skilled technician's hour is your scarcest resource, not the slot in the calendar.

Operator's note

Material is eating your implant crown

Materials are 22% of the implant-disilicate price — vs <15% on the others. Either renegotiate with your titanium-base supplier (volume discount above 30 units/mo is standard) or price this SKU separately for clinics that demand it.

What this model assumes (and what it doesn't)expand

Variable vs fixed. Only direct material is treated as truly variable cost. Technician payroll is fixed in reality (salaried staff) — but it's allocated per-product so you can see fully-loaded margin per SKU. EBITDA never double-counts: it's revenue − material − actual fixed opex (rent + tech + admin + depreciation).

Capacity. Skilled labor is 4 techs × 8h × 22 working days/month. Sintering oven is 2 10h cycles/day, 45 units per cycle.

Depreciation. Straight-line over the years you set. Real lab equipment (mills, ovens) often runs longer with maintenance — that's upside, not downside.

What's missing on purpose. Taxes, financing cost, replacement capex reserve, working capital, bad debt, scrap rate. Real P&L is 10–15% noisier than this. The model is a thinking tool, not an accounting record.

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