Four Advantages to Repairing Your Dental Handpieces

Dental handpieces have come a long way since the start of dentistry in 700bc, and they continue play a vital role in any dental practice today. Care and regular maintenance of these instruments is essential to preserving their lifespan and proper function. Whether your dental practice uses air driven handpieces, electric handpieces, or both, these little instruments are the workhorse of your practice and a large investment.  So it only makes good business sense to have them regularly checked and maintained. Here are four advantages to repairing your dental handpieces:

  1. Maintaining Proper Performance: Before sterilization was required by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2008, turbines lasted for years and very little maintenance was required to keep handpieces running at optimum performance. But today, daily sterilization takes a toll on the overall performance of handpieces, especially the turbines. In air driven handpieces, the turbine is the only moving part and, when in proper working order, can exceed 400,000 rpms.  When the handpieces run at these high speeds, they have to be sterilized so that the turbine doesn’t break down causing the handpiece to run sluggish. Maintaining proper cleaning and lubrication will extend the life, but it’s inevitable the turbine will need to be replaced to ensure proper handpiece performance.
  2. Effective and Efficient Patient Treatment: If the turbine is the brains of the handpiece, then the tiny little bearings are the heart. When the bearings start to wear down, the turbine no longer rotates at optimal performance, causing it to fail and eventually stop holding the bur in place during a procedure.  When the bearings start to fail, the handpiece makes a loud high pitch sound or vibration.  Avoiding the warning signs of an inferior performing handpiece has a number of pitfalls, including loss of patient treatment.  Having your handpieces checked out by a qualified repair technician on a regular schedule will ensure proper handpiece performance and lack of handpiece down time.
  3. Patients Satisfaction: Dental handpieces are the number one tool in any successful dental practice, allowing for a high degree of productivity that patients appreciate today.  The history of dental handpieces have drastically evolved over the last 150 years. Early handpieces were big and clunky, running at a maximum speed of 3000 rpm’s, which meant procedures took longer and were more painful.  Today, handpieces run at a much higher speed and with more efficiency.  Patients today have much busier lives and expect dental procedures to be shorter and less painful.  Regular maintaince on your handpieces will result in optimal handpiece performance, allowing the patient a more pleasurable experience with more frequent visits.
  4. Protecting your Investment: Protecting your investment and ensuring your dental handpieces are working to the best of their abilities is essential to running a profitable dental practice. Building a working relationship with a reputable dental handpiece repair company will ensure you are working more effectively and providing quality patient care without worrying about the performance of the handpiece.

If you’re looking for a company to partner with to help repair and extend the life of your dental handpieces, we invite you to download our new customer coupon. This will save you $50 on your first dental handpiece repair order!