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This is Fred Ball for Zions Bank, speaking on business.
I've heard it said that the shortest distance between two people is a smile. For 28 years Clark Cannon has been a part of Utah smiles ... literally. Clark, a certified dental technician, owns the dental lab Sculptec Dental Design in Cottonwood, and makes nearly 4,000 crowns, bridges and veneers for teeth every year. Now, that's a lot of smiles.
Clark started tinkering with ceramics and teeth molds at his father's dental office while in high school. He soon found that sculpting crowns not only satisfied his artistic interests in ceramics, but also paid the bills, so he decided to pursue a career in the art of custom made teeth. Clark received his certification in California and in 1976 opened for business.
When Clark first started as a dental technician, he says crowns were primarily cast in gold with a plastic facing and entirely made by hand. Now, Clark uses computers to scan a patient's tooth. The scanned images are then sent to Sweden where an inner core of either titanium or zirconium is fabricated. Clark and his team of seven specialists then add a kiln fired ceramic layering to the high-strength Procera cores, instead of commonly used metallic understructures. Clark's artistic touches come into play as he characterizes each crown by hand to match the rest of the patient's mouth. In addition to matching color, Clark also adds subtle touches; mimicking calcium deposits, crack lines, and a variety of other tooth personalities. Crowns shaped by Sculptec are hard to distinguish from natural teeth.
Clark says the quality of his work stems from the love he has of creating something that so closely resembles nature. He takes great pride in restoring not only people's teeth, but also their smile, confidence and self esteem. The care Clark puts into his patients goes unmatched by larger dental labs. He fulfills orders for his brother and approximately 25 other dentists in Utah, as well as one in Illinois.
As a result, thousands of people all over Utah wear crowns created by Sculptec Dental Design. I guess it could be said that Clark is improving people's smiles one crown at a time.
For Zions Bank, I'm Fred Ball. I'm speaking on business.
