Purchasing rotary instruments can be a significant but necessary investment for your dental clinic. That's why we're going to provide you with a series of tips for the proper maintenance and care of contra-angles, turbines, and handpieces in your clinic!
This way, you'll ensure their proper functioning, extend their lifespan, and reduce repairs and the resulting expenses in your dental clinic.
But most importantly, it's very important to always take into account the manufacturer's instructions, as maintenance is not always the same between different brands.
Although we know you're an expert in keeping your rotary material in optimal condition, we hope these tips will be useful to you. Let's get started!
How to Perform Manual Maintenance of Rotary Instruments
The basic maintenance, common to all manufacturers of rotary instruments for dental clinics, is as follows:
- Cleaning: Clean your rotary instruments regularly. Preferably after each use, even before sterilization, as this will ensure maximum hygiene and prevent cross-contamination.
- Lubrication: Additionally, if you have used a contra-angle for cleaning with polishing paste, lubricate it immediately. The particles that make up the polishing pastes, due to their abrasive power, can penetrate the mechanisms of the contra-angle head, causing premature mechanical wear.
- Lubrication of Contra-Angles and Handpieces:
- Lubrication of Turbines: in this case, you have two equivalent options:
Maintenance and sterilization do not cause damage to instruments designed for it. We recommend cleaning and lubricating them at least twice a day; after each sterilization and after a long period of non-use.
Steps for Proper Maintenance of Rotary Dental Instruments:
1) Preparation: Remove the Bur
First, prepare the instrument by removing the bur. Follow the two steps below:
A) Remove the bur.
B) Pre-disinfection of the rotary instrument with a clean tissue to eliminate any residue.
2) Cleaning of Rotary Instrument
The next step is to clean the instrument:
A) Rinse the rotary instrument with water (temperature below 38°C).
B) Remove the calculus from the aerosol mouth, if necessary.
C) Perform an internal cleaning using a cleaning spray like Spraynet and externally with a cloth.
3) Manual and Thermal Disinfection of Rotary Instrument
Disinfection is important, so you must follow two steps:
A) Disinfect manually with a surface disinfectant (follow the manufacturer's instructions).
B) Thermally disinfect using a device provided for this purpose.
4) Lubrication: Different for Handpieces and Contra-Angles, and for Turbines
Lubrication is essential to ensure the proper functioning of moving parts. You need to distinguish between different types of instruments:
A) Use a lubricant like Lubrimed by inserting it directly into the turbine rotor and making it spin in U.
B) Use a lubricant like Lubrifluid internally for a second, making sure the oil comes out.
5) Sterilization of the Instrument
Finally, the maintenance of your instruments should end with sterilization, a crucial step to use your instrument again on the next patient.
A) Place the instrument in a sterilization bag.
B) Class B Autoclave (over 135º).
As you can see, it's a very simple process to carry out in the daily routine of the clinic. But if you need to simplify and automate this maintenance process as much as possible, you'll also be interested in knowing the best machine option to ensure that maintenance is done correctly and in the shortest time! We'll tell you about it next.
How to Perform Rotary Instrument Maintenance with a Machine (Lubricare 2)
How Does Lubricare 2 Work?
It's a very easy-to-use machine that allows you to perform complete maintenance, including cleaning and lubrication, in an automated way.
The machine has four positions, the first two are for cleaning and the last two are for lubrication.
For contra-angle, it's a standard connection for all brands available in the market, and for turbine, it depends on the coupling used by our turbine, in this case, we've used a Unifix coupling, but we could use any other coupling from another turbine brand.
➜To perform instrument cleaning:
- Open the door and position the instruments on the cleaning couplings.
- Close the door.
- Mark the positions where the instruments are.
- Press the “Start” button.
The cycle lasts 25 seconds and performs both external and internal cleaning with SprayNet, which cleans all organic residues and dirt that the instrument may have.
➜Once the cleaning cycle is complete, instrument lubrication is performed:
- Open the door and remove the contra-angle and turbine from the cleaning couplings to place them in the lubrication position.
- Close the door.
- Mark the positions where the instruments are.
- Press the “Start” button.
Lubricare 2, in this part of the cycle, introduces oil and air, so that when the instrument comes out of the machine, it does so lubricated and purged of excess oil that it may have. This way, we can work with the instrument in the patient's mouth without needing to purge it again and avoid oil droplets falling into the patient's mouth.
The Lubricare 2 process is very efficient, very fast, and always the same way because it's done by a machine and we don't depend on a manual operation, which we may do with more or less care, but the machine always does it the same way.
Another very interesting thing about Lubricare 2 is its function to unclog the pin system of the turbine's chuck. When the turbine has become stuck with the bur or doesn't grip well, it can be introduced into Lubricare 2 to put an extra dose of oil in the pin system, thus recovering many turbines whose pin doesn't work well due to blockage caused by dirt. This solves many technical service requests due to this circumstance.
What advantages does Lubricare 2 have over manual instrument cleaning?
The difference is significant. Initially, it may seem that Lubricare 2 is an additional expense in the clinic, but when we use a cleaning spray like SprayNet from Bien Air to clean an instrument internally, spills will occur and we can stain our hands. Then, we have to lubricate the instrument manually with the oil bottle Lubrifluid, that is, we stain ourselves and also use much more spray than if we use Lubricare 2.
- Manual cleaning and lubrication: each bottle lasts around 80 pulses
- Cleaning and lubrication with Lubricare 2: each bottle lasts around 400 cycles.
Other Tips for Rotary Instrument Maintenance in a Dental Clinic
Finally, it's very important that if you notice any anomaly in the functioning of your dental clinic's rotary instrument, don't use it and call your trusted technician to review it.
- Use high-quality burs, as they have standardized shanks with a very small manufacturing tolerance. If the shank is out of tolerance, it wears out inside the chuck when pressure is applied and wears it out very quickly.
- Discard very worn-out burs. This is advisable because they don't cut well, require more pressure, which is transmitted to the bearings, heats them up, carbonizes them, and wears them out very early. You may also risk the bur getting stuck in the chuck and not being able to remove it.
- Never press the button to change the bur while the instrument is spinning, thus avoiding unnecessary wear on the push-button parts.
- Additionally, make sure the air reaching the instruments is completely dry. It's recommended to install a dryer in the dental clinic's compressor.
If you're starting your studies in dentistry, we hope you get the most out of these recommendations. Also, don't hesitate to visit our special section for students or consult us directly by phone or email at estudiantes@dentaltix.com for any query or group orders.
