Sharpening and Retipping Dental Instruments 

Sharpening Dental Instrument  and Retipping Dental Instruments

As a dental hygienist, you have to make sure that the instruments you use are sterilized, sharpened, and retipped. Over time, hand instruments wear out, and they need more attention than just cleaning and sterilizing. Regularly used instruments like scalers, luxating elevators, curettes, and probes require maintenance and sharping to perform well during dental procedures.

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Effect of the dull instrument:

Most of the time dental practices don’t even realize how much they’re suffering due to dull instruments. This wear and tear on instruments prevent them from performing quickly, thoroughly, and efficiently. This can cause significant harm to your patients and your practice.

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When not sharpened properly, dull curettes and scalers are not able to remove the tooth calculi in depth. They slide across the tooth surface inefficiently. Similarly, dull luxating elevators can’t penetrate through the periodontal ligaments properly. This makes the dentist use excess force which isn’t necessary and often results in trauma.

This excess force isn’t just traumatic for the patient but also for the dentist. It can cause ergonomic problems in dentists such as wrist, neck, hand, back, and shoulder pain for the practitioner.

In such cases, sharpened instruments improve cutting ability, save a lot of time, reduces fatigue, and increases overall dentist-patient ratio, which is all great for any practice. It is critical of on-time sharpening dental instruments and retipping dental instruments for the patients.

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Retipping Dental Instruments:

Retipping is a process in which a new tip is placed onto the handle after removing the old one through various mechanical and chemical processes.

We, at US Diamond Dental, have over forty years of experience in retipping and sharpening your dental instruments, and we can provide these various services within 24 hours. Local and international dental hygienists trust and rely on us for the sharpening and tipping of their dental instruments.

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Each day we are enhancing and expanding our facilities so match our rapidly increasing demand and better serve you.

US Diamond Dental is committed to excellence, quality, dedication, and high-quality dental instrument care.

 

Retipping does:

• Promotes recycling

• Instruments are customized according to office needs

• Instrument cost is reduced up to 50%
   

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Sharpening of dental instruments:

As a dental hygienist, you have often wondered how often should you retip and sharpen your instruments. This depends on the type and number of patients that come to you every day.

 

We recommend all our clients use a fine ceramic stone, which is specially designed to maintain the edge on all instruments for approximately one week. Sometimes, you might feel that your cutting edge is getting less sharp, especially after scaling a heavy calculus built up or cutting through periodontal bone with a lot of unnecessary force.

In this case, we recommend you send your instruments to us for some professional sharpening, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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However, adding sharpening dental instruments to your routine sterilization procedure is ideal for properly maintaining your instruments. If you feel that the instrument hasn’t been used often or has been maintained properly, then you should use the transformation stone instead. The sharpening process is less about removing the metal and more about maintaining its sharp edges.

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Try to think of a kitchen knife that is dull after continuous use of chopping on hard surfaces. That cutting edge is slowly folded over and needs to be sharpened with a sharpening device. If it’s not corrected, it will continue to fold over, break, and chip off faster. More time, material, and the cost is consumed and lost if not sharpened back to its original form.

 

If we periodically maintain the sharp edge, less energy is used, and a lot of our time is saved. This same principle applies to dental instruments, which are used in our practice every day on various patients.

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Concerns about retipping and sharpening:

It is a known fact that no instrument can stay sharp forever, whether it has special coatings over it or whether it was passed through various metallurgical processes. As you glide a sharp edge over a hard tooth surface, its edge will round off, and it will wear off slightly with each stroke.

With the time these small changes in your instruments start adding up. This will make you apply more pressure and use more strength to use the same instrument and do the same work. This will lead to higher chances of calculus burnishing as well as more discomfort for both of you and your patients. Since it is a slow process, this gradual wear and tear are difficult to spot at once.

We, at US Diamond Dental, have specifically designed a system for high-quality instruments that assure patient comfort and instrument longevity. We create dental instruments that not only hold their edges but can be sharpened as well, and we provide these services at such an easy convenience to our customers.

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How to know you need retipping and sharpening of your dental instruments:

The best test to know whether your dental instruments need sharpening or not are to hear the sounds of the instrument during the dental process. If the sound is absent, then this means the instrument you are using is dull, and it needs further sharpening to perform efficiently during the next treatment on a patient.

A sharp and well-tipped instrument always produces a loud and audible sound while you are working with it. This sound tells the practitioner that the instrument is up to mark to work on the patients. Identifying and evaluating the sound is important to evaluate the relationship of tooth and blade to know that it is placed on a proper angle. If the angle is improper, then there is a possibility that the required sound cannot be heard.

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All the dental instruments that you have in your dental clinic are an indispensable part of any dental practice. Being a dental hygienist, you know that equipment failure affects both the patients, the employees, the underlying revenue, and the ability of a practice to continue to operate.

Therefore, it is really important that you maintain the dental equipment’s to the highest standards, which achieve optimum operational efficiency with less downtime. We all know that dental instruments are very expensive so it’s best for any practice to keep them maintained and well running.

Sending them to us for sharpening and retipping is not only cost effective but also saves a lot of your time. In practice, it is important to be not only efficient but also observant of unusual noises or behavior from your instruments.

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We, at US Diamond Dental, know that, with passage of time, instruments can wear and tear making them perform inefficiently.

Dental instruments are expensive, and no practice can afford to buy new ones every other month. That’s where our retipping and sharpening services come to your rescue.

US Diamond Dental make your instruments like new. We know better than anyone else how time is of the utmost importance when you have patients in line to be treated. We save you time by returning your instruments retipped and sharpened within 24 hours.

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How to send your instruments to US Diamond Dental:

We ask our customers to pack their instruments securely, to avoid damage to the instruments during shipping. It is important to properly fill out an order form and provide it in your shipment.

 

The order form asks you to name your instruments and what you want to be done to them (i.e., retipping, sharpening, etc.). Also fill out your payment information, billing address, and mailing address. You can also provide any special instructions to your order, and we’ll try our best to accommodate. 

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Please ship your orders through USPS Priority Stand and Box, which allows you to send us as many instruments (200 more) in the medium size box for a cheap flat rate.

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The time duration of instrument return at US Diamond dental:

Our goal is to service and ship back out your instruments within 24-48 hours of receiving your order. We even offer expedited shipping for a small fee if you need your instruments even more urgently.

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Our Background:

We are the leading company in dental instrument manufacturing, sharpening, and retipping. At US Diamond Dental, our President and Founder studied tool-making and steel composition before starting the company.

 

During his education and training, he enjoyed making and remaking hand dental instruments, which led him to his lifelong passion and this beloved business. Before starting his own business, he worked at large dental instrument manufacturing companies for over a decade.

 

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With his vast background and experience in this field, he has in-depth knowledge of how dental instruments are made and used. He understands the finer details and various factors that contribute to making excellent hand-held dental instruments. In 1983, he founded US Diamond Dental in Wheeling, Illinois. The company has moved to its new home in Lawrenceville, Georgia, where we are happily serving our customers and community.

 

We owe a humble thank you to many of our loyal and valued customers. US Diamond Dental is flourishing each day and gaining new trusted customers faster than expected. We focus on producing the best quality hand-held dental instruments and providing the highest level of customer service to our clients. We listen to the valued input provided by our dental hygienists and dentist. This is our continued tradition because we know our customers know best.

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