Most laboratories qualify a dental supplier on price and sample quality, then discover the real risk six months later. The failure that hurts is not a bad first lot — it is a specification that drifts, a certificate that stops matching the goods, or a grade that quietly changes when the price is renegotiated. The twelve questions below are the ones that separate a supplier from a vendor.
Material and specification
- Mechanical and optical properties of the exact grade — written down, not verbally? A grade and a number, per grade. If the answer is a range spanning several products, the specification is not controlled.
- Is the shrinkage factor batch-specific and supplied with the goods? A generic default means the manufacturer has not verified density per lot.
- Which standard is the strength figure tested to? ISO 6872, ISO 20795-1 and ISO 6873 are test methods; an in-house number is a different product commercially.
- What are the processing parameters the figures assume? A setting expansion figure is meaningless without the water-to-powder ratio that produced it.
Quality system and documentation
- Is the quality system certified to ISO 13485, and what is the certificate scope? A scope that excludes the product you are buying is not a certification of that product.
- Does every lot ship with a certificate of analysis quoting measured values? Ask to see one for a real shipment, not a template.
- Can they trace a finished blank back to the incoming raw-material lot? This is what makes a complaint investigation possible.
- Can they support a supplier audit and provide the documents your assessor will ask for? A supplier who resists this has something to protect.
- Are CE and FDA positions documented for your destination market? Not the brand’s registration — the position of the product line and specification you are buying.
Reliability and export
- Can they hold the specification batch to batch, and what happens when a value falls outside the band? The answer to this question tells you more about a supplier than the price does.
- What is the lead time on a repeat order, and what happens if a lot fails? Ask what the remedy was the last time it happened.
- Will they supply samples for validation on your own mill? A supplier confident in lot consistency has no reason to resist this.
How to run the checklist
Send all twelve as a short written list and compare answers side by side. A supplier who answers all twelve in writing, quickly, is usually the one still answering emails in two years. Where an answer is partial, ask for the document — the gap between “we can” and “here it is” is exactly the risk you are trying to price.
We are happy to be put through this checklist, and our technology page sets out most of the answers in advance. Send us your requirements — product line, critical specification and destination market — and we will reply with a specification proposal and quotation within 24 hours.
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