r/Dentistry • • Feb 11 '26

Dental Professional Sold and repaired dental equipment for over 20+ years — AMA about breakdowns, maintenance, and equipment costs (and costly mistakes)

97 Upvotes
Me and a couple fellow gearheads!

Hey Reddit 👋

I’ve been a gearhead in dental for a little over 20 years, working on both sides of the aisle — selling dental equipment and repairing it in real offices.

I’ve worked with:

  • Private practices, group practices, and DSOs
  • New builds, expansions, and 20-year-old offices trying to keep things alive
  • Chairs, delivery units, compressors, vacuums, sterilization, imaging, and “why is this beeping right now?” situations

I’ve seen:

  • Brand-new equipment fail way earlier than it should
  • Offices overpay for simple fixes
  • Preventable breakdowns that turned into five-figure problems
  • Great equipment ruined by bad installs or bad maintenance
  • Cheap equipment that actually held up better than expected

Ask me anything about:

  • What breaks most (and what almost never does)
  • Preventative maintenance that actually matters vs. busywork
  • When to repair vs. replace
  • What dentists routinely overpay for
  • New equipment pricing, bundles, and negotiation mistakes
  • Service contracts — worth it or not?
  • Red flags when buying used or refurbished equipment
  • Things sales reps don’t explain and techs wish you knew

I’m not here to sell anything, name-and-shame, or give legal/medical advice — just straight, practical answers from someone who’s been elbows-deep in this stuff for two decades.

Fire away!


r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

[Weekly] New Grad Questions

1 Upvotes

A place to ask questions about your first job, associate contracts, how real dentistry and dental school dentistry differ, etc.


r/Dentistry • • 1h ago

Dental Professional When will the Hygiene market improve?

• Upvotes

Posted a position a few weeks ago with the compensation package clearly listed. Someone comes in for the working interview, is offered the job, and accepts verbally immediately despite being told multiple times she can think it over and get back to us. I get a text less than a week before her first shift (which is a column we filled for her by calling patients) saying that she was told new grads were making X at another office. In what world is this behavior acceptable in a professional setting? How have we gotten here as a profession? I’m at my wits end with it.


r/Dentistry • • 10h ago

Dental Professional Shining elf users

7 Upvotes

How do you like it and would you recommend? Do you have the cart for it? Any experience with the smile design software? If you do aligners which one do you?


r/Dentistry • • 26m ago

Dental Professional Why can I sometimes see the join between emax and tooth/margin on try in?

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• Upvotes

Is this a design or prep error? After fit/cementing, it seemed fine.

Thank you


r/Dentistry • • 12h ago

Dental Professional What hand pieces do you guys use ? I use the star 430swl lube free, I have to change the turbines.

9 Upvotes

Tired of having to constantly change turbines every few months

Can someone recommend a good quality handpiece that isn’t a electric handpiece. Just better than the star 430 handpieces


r/Dentistry • • 15h ago

Dental Professional Anyone make the transition from private practice to an FQHC?

15 Upvotes

Been considering making this jump to an FQHC job to go for pslf as I’m 600k in debt from school. Making around 225k pretax as a 1099 employee with my own S corp for tax benefits.

Any insured as to how to find a good fqhc job? And any input as to the daily ins and outs of that sort of job? Any id love to hear anyone’s personal experiences with doing this, and especially from anyone in the north east states too


r/Dentistry • • 16h ago

Dental Professional Nightguard Design for Clenching

13 Upvotes

What is your preferred design for occlusal guards for pts who are clenchers vs bruxers?

I typically have been doing flat plane hard NG for pts who are asymptomatic with signs of bruxism, and flat with anterior guidance for pts who have tmj symptoms.


r/Dentistry • • 8h ago

Dental Professional Re-do crown?

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4 Upvotes

Hi all!
I’m in my second year of practicing and everyday it’s another disaster. It’s never an easy day. Fillings are hard, crown preps are hard. I’m just not catching on and it’s starting to reallly affect my mental health.
I’m someone that will lose sleep over any patient that I feel I did not deliver quality work. I’m constantly trying to learn and take criticism. But nothing is working.
Today I completed crown delivery on #29 which I had done the RCT for. This is the x-ray after delivery. I’m horrible with tactile feel and couldn’t really feel anything with my explorer that was clicking but that definitely looks open on my x-ray. I just wish I said something on the spot.

Would you re-do this crown? And how would you address it with this patient if they are coming in two weeks to start a different crown? How do I bring this up?
Thank you :(


r/Dentistry • • 4h ago

Dental Professional Your thoughts on lower left 6?

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0 Upvotes

r/Dentistry • • 11h ago

Dental Professional How do you get away from chatty patients (parents of pediatric patients)?

5 Upvotes

New peds grad here in a PPO/FFS office

I feel like I lose so much time explaining things over and over again to parents, they’ll have a million and one questions about their precious Johnny and I’m seeing 4 more patients ready for me to check on them, I don’t want the parents to feel dismissed, but they’ll ask me again and again “wait HOW many cavities!?” even though I told them “Johnny has 4 cavities in between his baby teeth that he needs to floss, Betty will get you scheduled to do that under laughing gas, which is a safe light sedation to help him do better”

Like idk how much more to explain, how quickly I should be going, how to move on from their endless simple questions I’ve already answered if they paid attention to me talking.

I feel like dumping it on my assistant to reexplain has not gone well, the parents feel dismissed and insulted. They want to feel more listened to, but like Doctor time is valuable and I can’t keep sitting there and explaining again and again why this is a metal crown and not a white filling, why we need to tx plan a pulp/ssc just in case but will try to do a white filling if it’s small enough, like nothing is good enough for these parents unless I explain 3-5x for each parent and I can’t keep doing that.

What are some good one liners, phrases, etc I can use to abbreviate these conversations and get these parents to let me go to my next patient?


r/Dentistry • • 13h ago

Dental Professional Anyone with real-world experience using the Smile Scan 2 (KP / Woodpecker)?

4 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I’m looking for some honest feedback from fellow clinicians. I’m about to transition to a digital workflow in my practice, and the Smile Scan 2 (the one by Kevin Peter / Woodpecker) caught my eye due to its competitive pricing. However, finding unbiased information online is nearly impossible; it's all distributor marketing.

I don’t want to buy blindly, so I would deeply appreciate it if anyone using it daily could share their thoughts on:

  • Lab workflow: Is the STL/PLY export clean and fully compatible with Exocad, or does the software cause issues when sending files?
  • Speed and AI features: Does it actually filter out soft tissues (tongue/cheeks) efficiently at 40 fps as advertised, or does it constantly lag in wet areas?
  • Durability: How well do the scanning tips hold up against autoclave cycles?
  • Is it worth it? Has it met your expectations, or would you recommend saving up a bit more for a more established brand?

Any insights, good or bad, would be incredibly helpful. Thank you for your time!

Best regards from Ecuador! 🇪🇨


r/Dentistry • • 16h ago

Dental Professional What is this?

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8 Upvotes

19 yo
No change since last x ray 2 years ago


r/Dentistry • • 15h ago

Dental Professional Dutch government: No additional education despite growing shortage

6 Upvotes

Geen extra opleidingsplekken tot tandarts, ondanks groeiend tekort

I'm furious. My country, The Netherlands is living off foreign dental education. Since I went to university 20y ago I learned, 'within 10 years there will be a shortage' because more dentists will be retiring then graduating. It's basic demographics. The government did nothing.

At the moment 1 in 4 dentists is foreign, in my region (Zeeland) it's 1 in 2. While there are plenty of capable and ambitious young Dutch who want to become a dentist. But no, €30M a year for over 90 extra places is too expensive. Ofcourse a vision, and decent policies is way too hard or too much work for our minister. Because in the future those costs will be compensated by income tax, while an undertreated population is probably more expensive. But those expenses are directly for people and employers.

No additional dental training places despite growing shortage

Despite the mounting shortage of dentists, no additional training places are being created for students wishing to become dentists. This is according to a letter sent to the House of Representatives today by Minister of Education Rianne Letschert. According to the minister, expanding the dentistry training program is "very costly," requiring an annual investment of €30.1 million.

With this decision, the minister is disregarding the advice of the *Capaciteitsorgaan* (Capacity Body), an independent foundation that assesses future workforce needs for dentists and other healthcare professionals. Last December, the advisory body recommended increasing the number of training places to 386 per year. Currently, there are 270 places, rising to 290 next year.

'Training programs have capacity 'Etienne Verheijck, Director of Education at the ACTA dentistry faculty in Amsterdam, is disappointed that the minister is not adopting the recommendation. "We consider this unwise. We had hoped the advice would be followed, even if only partially. Yes, it costs money, but the training programs have the capacity to educate more students."

The shortage of dentists is expected to worsen in the coming years. The *Capaciteitsorgaan* has been recommending an increase in training places since 2009. Hans de Vries, chairman of the professional association for dentists (KNMT), calls it "downright worrying" and "incomprehensible" that the minister is dismissing the advice. In doing so, she would be blocking "a structural solution to keep Dutch dental care accessible in the future."

More dental hygienists However, Minister Letschert has decided to train more students as dental hygienists. Starting in the 2027–2028 academic year, an additional 28 students will be permitted to begin the dental hygiene program, bringing the total to 381.

According to the minister, this increase is necessary due to the growing trend of dentists delegating tasks, with dental hygienists taking over some of the work previously performed by dentists. The letter to Parliament does not specify the additional costs involved.

Foreign dentists In the Netherlands, the shortage of dentists is increasingly being addressed by dentists from abroad. Figures from the KNMT show that one in four practicing dentists in the Netherlands was trained abroad. In some regions, such as Zeeland, this figure has already reached one in two.


r/Dentistry • • 21h ago

Dental Professional How would you treat this tooth? Extraction or something else?

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18 Upvotes

r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional How do you avoid breaking an upper molar at its neck during extraction? I usually have to pull upper molars in middle aged and young patients with strong periodontium

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17 Upvotes

r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional Doc my tooth still hurts after I went to the emergency dentist. Thanks dear colleague…

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121 Upvotes

This picture was taken after a quick consultation. Quick GP fit to see which hole is which. Crown is also loose, patient comes back tomorrow to see if it’s still salvageable. Probably not, I think the tooth is fractured anyway. Luckily the crown isn’t recent.

Canals weren’t even calcified


r/Dentistry • • 12h ago

Dental Professional What codes are you using for 1,16,17,32?

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0 Upvotes

r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional A Canadian dentist is being sued and is no longer allowed to use anesthetic after “a patient died following injection into a vessel”

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78 Upvotes

In the claim, Blatz's estate accuses Janz of injecting the needle directly into a blood vessel instead of the target tissue. 

The lawsuit also says Janz used a dosage of Articaine beyond the acceptable amount, failed to pull the syringe's plunger back to check for blood and failed to reposition the needle to ensure the Articaine went strictly into the soft tissue.


r/Dentistry • • 23h ago

Dental Professional Just placed and implant and it's very loose

6 Upvotes

I just placed an upper first molar implant and the implant is very loose but barely able to put on a cover screw. Patient has no relevant medical condition and is a 60 year old lady.

CT scan shows a very wide ridge but no trabeculation at all, just completely radiolucent. When I did my osteotomy, it just dropped in after piercing the cortical bone and subsequent drills had no resistance at all. So I prepared a 4.5mm hole and placed a 5.5mm diameter implant and it still didn't have adequate primary stability.

I'm just very perplexed. What would be the cause of this, what could I have done better or prepared better and how should I go ahead with this case?


r/Dentistry • • 11h ago

Dental Professional Dental Home Unit (Dynamic) tipping fuse of my room

0 Upvotes

My dental home unit keeps tipping off the fuse of my room. The lights dont go off, but all the power sockets stop working immediately. I bought the unit second hand from someone. Tested it in their house and it was working fine. I tried disconnecting my refrigerator (part of another circuit) but that didnt help. I have my exam in few weeks and I dont know what to do and how to fix this. Can someone please help? Is this a known issue that anyone faced?


r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional How would you treat this child? Extraction of those roots or something else?

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134 Upvotes

r/Dentistry • • 18h ago

Dental Professional San Francisco vs Orlando

1 Upvotes

Hello,
I am trying to decide between SF and orlando as I have family in both cities and I am exploring options. How does one compare to the other in terms of patients, pay, lifestyle, etc I know SF is the most expensive city in America but I am single so I can live pretty modestly. The job I got in Orlando is with a DSO and SF is private practice with a lot of technology like Yumi for implants. SF job is also out of network and orlando one takes HMO


r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional would you fill

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2 Upvotes

noted an r3 radiolucency on the distal of the lower second left molar but did not note any cavitation intraorally, would yall fill or opt for monitoring?


r/Dentistry • • 1d ago

Dental Professional KARE 11 Investigates: Criminal Investigation into death of dental patient

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10 Upvotes

Always unfortunate seeing this in the news. Not placing blame anywhere as there are always things we can't account for. Just unfortunate for those involved.

Edit: per the video - a mobile sedation service was administering the sedation