Nuno,
My guess is tip had been dragged across enamel or flashback from amalgam,porcelain,or crown

Common problem, and I agree with Dr. Schalter. Most likely the tip in the photo was cracked by “sparking” around metal containing restorations or bases/liners.

This tip is history unless you can figure out how to polish the tip. Use of this tip will result in damage to the laser mirror, trunk fiber and possibly internal laser components.

Including taxes and shipping, replacement of this tip will cost approximately &#36100. In my practice, I find that the G6 tip is useful for a range of 36 to 60 procedures.

Al

Charles,

I have a few tips you can use since I think this is a viable enterprise but beyond my ability to do accurately enough.

When you have the process refined, we can help with the parameters of which tips will be worthwhile to restore. For instance a G-4 tip is already short enough and if the process shortens the tip length more than 1 mm it will be of little use to me. Some of the tips taper to 400 microns. Shortening will make the tip wider. How much that will affect performance will have to be seen as to its significance.

As to the parameters of the polish, I do not know that.

Good luck. Keep us informed of your progress.

I have done this tons with a porcelain polishing system with the Delight tips but will Biolase honor the warranty if you do polish the tips and the trunk fiber blows.

I will tell you it is wild how careful you are when you have the Biolase. I have talked to so many of you and your stories are all the same about the care you use when changing tips, being around metal etc.

With the DeLight I am not careful and only realized that if I had the Biolase I would be blowing a ton of fibers as I am not ingrained into taking all the steps that you always take with your laser.

I consider myself lucky because I know that I am a dunce when it comes to maintenance and stuff and I would be having a one on one relationship with the tech as I blow the fibers one after another.

Here is a photo collage of the porcelain polishing of tips thread…….. Only to be used with DeLight…….I dont want to be blamed by any company for failures. I have done this tons and never had a fiber blow on me in 4 years with my DeLight.

Glenn

Gentleman sorry for not getting back here sooner.
I purchased a new G4 from my local dentist to look at quality of finish and flatness.
The first thing we noticed about the new tip was the level of polish ( surface roughness ) is about 3uM. In Fiber Optics we routinely have to polish to 0.02uM. Next was the flatness, this did not seem to be a critical parameter since both ends of the new tip had about 1 degree of angularity. We saw varing degrees of angularity on the used tips we have recieved as samples. Angularity and visual inspection is measured with an interferometer. This instrument will tell us the surface roughness, angularity and flatness. We can even measure the width of any scratch.
Quality control is something we are very interested in and already tuned for because of fiber optics.

Our test polishing has gone well and we delivered some Beta samples for testing this week. Should have initial results in the next week or two.

Undoubtedly there will be some tips we may not be able to polish. Fixturing for all the different models may not be feasable if the volume is not there. The most material we have had to remove to repair a G4 was 1mm.

Be sure to save all your old and damaged tips.

Feel free to contact us with any questions, comments or suggestions at 800-675-1099

Bob Sloan or Charles Buzzetti

Mr. Buzzetti:

Have you examined additional new Waterlase tips so that you have a good sized sample to report on polish quality/angularity? There have been some concerns regarding efficacy of new tips. Do you feel that your company may be able to polish/angulate tips better than their unused condition?

What are the results of the initial tests with the refurbished tips? As has been mentioned, if we polish the distal end of a tapered tip this will increase its width and therefore change the focal spot size application of the laser energy.

Trying to ignore economic considerations/turf wars but what about Biolase approval of using refurbished tips? We cleave diode/Nd:YAG fibers all day but erbiums are much more “cantankerous”. If the dentist has an extended service contract on a Waterlase and a system failure occurs while using a refurbished tip – will we be covered?

What are the economic advantages of using refurbished tips? As a reference point, Thursday I purchased my first set of G6 tips in about a year. Not including shipping/taxes the cost per tip was about &#3682.

Not trying to be a butthead just asking some questions,

Al

Charles:

Sounds like you offer a nice service if the polished tips work as advertised. Regarding your comment:

“The tips generate alot of income for Biolase, possibly equal to the sales of new machines each year”

From comments made at the last earnings release conference call, consumables (tips) currently make up a few % of sales so it is starting to be noticable but only at a fraction of laser systems sales. It should gradually increase as the number of installed systems increase.