How we got here

BDL opened its doors in 1978 as a small family business making custom appliances for local dental practices on the south coast. Nearly fifty years later we're still in the same family — now in our third generation — and still operating from our base in Christchurch, Dorset.

Plenty has changed in the work itself. The fundamentals — accurate impressions or scans in, precisely made appliances out — haven't. What has changed is the technology around it: where everything was once cast, packed and hand-finished, we now use intraoral scans and CAD software for the planning and design stages, then pair that with traditional hand-finishing for the parts that still benefit from a technician's eye.

That shift wasn't reluctant. We've invested heavily in digital workflows over the last decade — direct scanner inboxes with every major brand, in-house 3D printing for free models with every appliance, and CAD-led design for orthodontic, snoring and bruxism cases. The hand-craft is still there because hand-craft still makes the difference; the digital is there because it makes the lab faster, more accurate and easier to work with.

Some of our customers have been sending us cases for more than twenty years. We take that seriously. The relationships are what the business is really built on.