Talking The Mini Handpiece

Small-headed handpieces are nothing new. I’m guessing most of us have owned one at some point in our careers. We’ve been enamored by their compact size but underwhelmed by their ability to cut tooth structure. We also don’t care for the high-pitched screeching often associated with earlier generation models. Ultimately, they have found their way to the rear of our “back-up” handpiece drawer, and we only look for them when we’re called upon to restore the disto-buccal of No. 18 on a patient who has ultra-limited opening.detachable scaler handpiece

We then go searching for the short shanked burs because our mini handpiece doesn’t work with normal length cutting instruments. They’re on the shelf somewhere. This has to sound familiar!

(Unless of course you are a pediatric dentist who uses micro handpieces on a daily basis.)

A few months back the good people at J. Morita asked if I would like to try out their soon-
to-be-introduced TwinPower Ultra series handpieces. I was told I would be quite surprised by the ability of such a small handpiece to cut like a full-sized counterpart. I thought to
myself, “Sure…what have I got to lose? Try it for a day and then give it back