Today, people are suffering with various dental problems caused due to lack of hygienic dental habits. Build up of food particles inside the gaps of teeth lead to tooth cavity and its decay. Failing to clean the food particles leads to development of bacteria on teeth and it becomes tough to clean with brush. Hence one of the alternative methods to clean teeth can be done by using dental drill.
Dental drill is a tool used by dentists to clean and remove plaque from tooth’s surface and to bore through tooth enamel. Modern dental drill has made dentists to work more accurately and quickly than ever before with less pain.
Parts of a dental drill
- Turbine type: Rotary system in an air powered powered drill contains an impeller/ rotor mounted on a spindle that rotates at high speed to catch air from the compressor
- Hand piece: The gears, motor and drive shaft are positioned inside the hand piece made of either titanium or plastic.
- Drive shaft: Several gears are attached to the drive shaft and these toothed wheels transfers the rotary motion along the length of the drill.
- Drill bit: These drill bits should be hard enough to wear away the tooth enamel and hence made up of hardest materials like tungsten carbide and some are even tipped with diamond.
Working of dental drills:
- Modern dental drills are powered by air driven or electric motors. The other components of today’s dental drill are gear, hand piece, tungsten drill bit.
- A series of drive shafts and gears are present inside the drills hand piece that transfer rotary motion from power supply to the tungsten drill bit placed in the head piece.
- Drills that are motorized electrically can rotate about 30,000 rpm. For a drill that is turbine powered, a compressor helps to convert pressurized air in to mechanical energy thus rotating the tungsten drill bit at over 300,000 rpm.
- New technologies which include air abrasion drills and laser improves the experience of dentist by providing drills fr removing decay without generation of noise, heat and other vibrations.
Uses of dental drill
- To prevent various dental diseases dentists use dental drills for treating the damaged tooth enamel.
- It is used to clean up the food materials inside the teeth cavities.
- Dental drills are helpful for people suffering from pain due to dental problems.