My 3-year Carbon subscription is done - what do I do next?

I wrote about our early journey with Carbon and their M2 printer subscription model several years ago (I couldn't afford one Carbon, now I cant afford not to have two....). Many people told me they found that useful in making their own decisions about Carbon so I thought a three year follow up may also be helpful.?Here I am now, and my three-year subscription is up so it’s decision time - do I renew the contract or simply end it, walk away and look for an alternative printer solution that I can own outright?

?I’ve paid a lot of money to Carbon; in fact, I’ve paid so much money I could have bought another 20+ printers of the other brand printers I have in my lab.?Imagine it, an entire fleet of printers which I own outright, no more outgoing subscription, no more monthly bills.?So why would I even consider subscribing for another 3 years for two printers that I will never own??

?Let us start with some facts about my three years with Monty and Marmaduke, ‘my’ beloved M2 printers:

·??????We are 10,000+ prints in and we have had a staggeringly low failure rate.?How many you ask??24 failures of which 21 were human error.?That’s 3 actual print failures, one for each year.?

·??????How many times have those printers broken down??3 times, and each time it was fixed in less than 24 hours, one of them even on the same day. ?I have not missed one single patient appointment due to a print failure or printer going down in over three years.?

·??????We have broken four cassettes, and that’s cost me nothing.?It’s all in the subscription.??

·?????We have seen huge software upgrades, faster printers, smoother prints, and I’ll be honest, so many parts have been upgraded in these machines I’m unsure just how much of the original M2 is in there.?

·??????I’ve had engineers call me, “Hey Ash, California noticed a potential part failure in Monty, we will pop in tomorrow and replace it.?It’s working just fine now, this is just predictive maintenance, but better to be safe than have a printer go down”.?Just read that last sentence again - they are tracking all the parts in my M2’s and if anything looks odd, they replace it before it fails.?I’ve never seen this in dental technology, and it still blows my mind.?

?I would also like to be clear that I run other printer brands in my lab, and they are fabulous.?They complement my Carbon M2’s perfectly, a dovetail printing solution and I adore my other printers, but would they handle the work load I put through Monty and Marmaduke? That’s the decision I must make.

?If I sign this document, I am tied for another three years of monthly subscriptions, but I also know it will be the most reliable part of my business.?No down time, no failures, predictive maintenance, upgrades, I won’t be left with an obsolete printer, no hidden costs, no fracture of cassette costs and each new material that’s added is fully validated, works perfectly, and won’t let you down.?I’ve looked at small, medium, and industrial printer solutions from countless other companies now, so I feel I’m armed with all the information for me to make that decision, however that is also where Byrnes Dental Lab is different.?This is a monumental decision from both the workflow and cost perspectives.?If I get this wrong, not only could we suffer financially, but we could also damage the way we work, so this is not a decision for me alone - this is a decision for the team and we put it out to them.

?100% voted for me sign that contract again and signed it I did.?One of my team even said, “Carbon is so ingrained in what we do as a company, it would be ludicrous to consider anything but signing that”.?Powerful words all round and they were not wrong.? It’s signed, 3 more years with a truly incredible company but there was a curve ball - in the team discussion something came up from Tim and Dan in the manufacturing team.??They were 100% behind this decision but they had one major doubt, “we don’t think two is enough”.??

?Meet Matilda, our new M2 who joins Monty and Marmaduke, the dream duo just became the tremendous trio.?

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