Chairside Magazine Volume 2, Issue 1 - Glidewell Dental Labs

Pressure Vessel
This is a Pressure Vessel for silicone material injection. Using the
vessel, we create rubber molds, which are then used in the fabrication
of pressable ceramics. This device uses air pressure to force the
otherwise viscous silicone material into a chamber to create the mold.
Today, 40% of the ceramic restorations we fabricate in the laboratory
are pressables, and that number is expected to eventually double.
X, Y Table
This adjustable X,Y Table has a spindle mounted on the top for zirconium
oxide sample preparation.
military engineering training combined to make him an integral part of one of the dental lab industry’s
most advanced commercial R&D departments.
One of the first episodes that brought Mikhail’s talents to Jim Glidewell’s personal attention was the failure
of a critical $30,000 piece of intricate equipment from Germany that would have slowed production of
restorations to a crawl, something that would have been unacceptable to Glidewell, its customers and to
countless patients around the country.
The problem was that the machine’s manufacturer in Germany would take two weeks to get a technician
to California with the proper replacement parts. Not good. Enter Mr. Tkachev with an offer to take
the thing apart, figure out what makes it tick and do whatever it takes to get it back online. Needless
to say, there were those who questioned the advisability of such a course of action, but Mike knew he
could do it-all those years of military training weren’t wasted on him and Jim Glidewell opted to give him
the chance.
Mike worked into the night, eventually isolating the problem to a certain sector of the main motherboard,
which he took home to test with his own special electronic diagnostic equipment. (Best not to ask.) By 4
a.m. he’d tracked the problem to a single chip that he was sure was the culprit.
When businesses opened later that morning, he rushed to an electrical supply shop to get a replacement
chip. “No such thing” he was told by the man behind the counter. “Not in this country.” Turns out he was
right. There was no U.S. equivalent for the German chip used in the machine.
Not to be deterred, Mikhail asked for the catalog to leaf through himself to find something, anything, that
he could use to replace the faulty chip. Finally he found an item that was close enough in function and
size to the original that with some ingenuity and a hot soldering iron he could make it work, whether it
wanted to or not.
Sure enough, before noon that very day, just as Glidewell managers were filing into a meeting where
they’d decide what to do about the calamitous equipment failure, Mikhail was able to send the message
up to the brass: ”The machine is put back together, and it works. It works!”
Mikhail has gone on to devise dozens of ingenious solutions to problems, and new ways to accomplish
old tasks in smarter, more efficient and more economical ways. He’s an important reason Glidewell is the
competitive powerhouse it is, constantly offering its customers new products and better prices.
One such example is the magnetic articulator system marketed by Glidewell Direct. It’s an elegantly simple
solution for dental technicians’ desire to hold impressions securely in place and then remove them quickly,
without having to make a huge investment in a competing system. Yes, it was Jim Glidewell’s idea to
develop such a tool, but it’s Mikhail’s creation, right down to the details of tooling and die-casting.
Of course, being the gentleman he is, Mikhail breaks into his typical bright-eyed, boyish grin when
he discusses the articulator and credits his co-workers and especially Wolfgang Friebauer, the head of
Glidewell’s R&D department, for bringing it into being. He even asked that Chairside deflect credit to his
machinist, Viktor Khivrenko.
Need proof of the Tkachevs’ success in America? Both of their children graduated college at the age of
18. Daughter Alona is now studying nursing at Long Beach State, and son Sergei, who earned a BA from
UCLA at age 21, works at KPMG and is halfway though his CPA exams.
Meanwhile, Vladikavkas remains a small but technically advanced town in the Caucasus Mountains, now
home to the Polymer Research Institute of Electronic Materials, a place Mikhail may have found employment
had he stayed. And had the secret police approved.
Laboratory Portrait
Laboratory Portrait