Nordent Instruments from Birth to Delivery
As a dental care provider, you depend on your instruments in order to deliver the highest quality care to your patients. Nordent knows that every instrument produced must meet exact criteria in design, materials, and craftsmanship. Our passion is to help our customers deliver the best patient care, with the highest quality instruments, manufactured and tested at our facility in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
It all starts with our superior signature stainless steel recipe. This surgical grade steel is manufactured domestically by a local partner of 35 years, ensuring excellent quality and exact duplication with each batch. While several elements are present, the most critical consistency point is the chromium, carbon blend. Chromium to make the instruments corrosion resistant in the sterilization process and carbon to create the overall hardness creating long lasting durability.
Twelve-foot-long steel bars arrive at the plant ready for quality control testing for chemical composition, hardness, and consistency. Next the rough forms of the instrument tips called turnings are created using advanced CNC machining. These turnings are then ready to be fabricated into a myriad of specific instrument tips. The raw turnings must be individually bent in a process similar to creating a key. The turning is inserted into an instrument jig to create the exact instrument tip shape complete with bends and form. Each tip requires its own jig specification and the process is both exacting and lengthy. One highly skilled technician will create over 1,000 instrument tips a day.
About 90% of the instrument cost is found in the fabrication of the tip. The steel itself comes at quite a cost and precise cryogenic hardening is expensive, but these are the two biggest factors that determine how well an instrument holds its edge and how long it lasts.
The cryogenic hardening process takes place in vacuum furnaces and requires highly controlled heating and cooling techniques which can vary depending on the final instrument type. This exacting process can take up to two weeks and has literally thousands of variations with the heating and cooling cycles. Metallurgy is a very precise science and excellent quality requires patience and understanding of the science. Nordent again chooses to use the best, most expensive and local partner for the hardening process to guarantee excellence far beyond what can be achieved by low-cost manufacturers. After hardening, the tips are tumble-polished to produce a completely smooth finish with an external chromium layer which makes them corrosion resistant for long term use through repeated sterilization cycles.
The instrument tips are then secured to the chosen handle by press fitting. Press fitting is the most secure method, no threads, no glue, no solder, as these can break down through repeated sterilization causing loose tips and inferior instruments. The use of glues and solder is one of the main reasons that re-tipping of an instrument is cause for concern. Each Nordent tip is individually hand fitted at precise angles making the most balanced and secure instrument for long term use and wear. The instrument handles are laser marked for easy identification, and with several diverse handle styles offering the greatest tactile sensitivity and operator comfort.
- DuraLite® HEX Our original ERGONOMIC handle that changed the industry! DuraLite HEX (shown below) has a large 7/16” (11 mm) diameter that comfortably positions your hand and fingers in the “Modified Pen Grasp” position. The handle has a gentle texture to reduce glare and is 100% stainless steel to make it easy to clean and sterilize by any method.
- DuraLite® ROUND (shown below) has a large 3/8” (9.5 mm) diameter and is extremely lightweight for maximum tactile sensitivity. Our exclusive ControlRing™ design gives you the ultimate in grip and control. It requires less finger pressure resulting in less hand and finger fatigue. The handle has a gentle texture to reduce glare and is 100% stainless steel to make it easy to clean and sterilize by any method.
- DuraLite® ROUND Diagnostic Both of our double and single end (shown below) handles have a large 3/8” (9.5 mm) diameter. The double end is only 16 grams, and the single end is the lightest weight handle in the industry at only 12 grams. Both handles are designed for the ultimate in tactile sensitivity, have a gentle texture to reduce glare, and are 100% stainless steel to make them easy to clean and sterilize by any method.
- DuraLite ColorRings® Our newest and most advanced ergonomic handle design! handle has the same large 3/8” (9.5 mm) diameter as our popular DuraLite Round design. The handle design has a more gradual taper from the tip to the grip so that your fingers are even more comfortable closer to the tip. In addition, we have extended the grip by 50% to give you maximum slip-free gripping power over a larger portion of the handle. The handle has a gentle texture to reduce glare and is 100% stainless steel to make it easy to clean and sterilize by any method. The DuraLite ColorRings handle incorporates four color ring positions that are below the finger grip surface allowing you to better identify, organize and customize your instrumentation. Our innovative design makes customizing the DuraLite ColorRings handle simple and easy. (Also available in single end with four inset color positions)
- Medium Round #4 handle has a moderate 5/16” (8mm) diameter with a segmented knurled grip to provide excellent control. The handle is 100% stainless steel and the finish is bright electro-polished to make it easy to clean and sterilize by any method.
Next each instrument is presented to the finishers. These craftspeople are the most experienced artisans. Each craftsman must complete an apprenticeship program of approximately ten years to gain the skills required to create the perfect angles and sharpest blades. Each finisher must be ambidextrous to skillfully create each blade angle with ease and precision. The first step in the finishing process is to correctly to establish the blade face, which must be perfectly positioned in relation to the shank and bends of each tip. Then the lateral surfaces must be sharpened to ultimate precision. Each blade angle must be a perfect 75 degrees with only a 2-degree tolerance in each direction to create a seamless experience for the clinician.
The finishing of the formed and hardened tip requires time, training, and extreme precision. Both the material and the finish of the tip determine the instrument durability, how long it will hold an edge and how long the instrument will last. To make a cheaper instrument, inferior tips can be used, with cheaper hardening or a lesser grade of steel, but Nordent chooses to use only exceptional grade materials and invest the time and talent into creating an instrument guaranteed to bring satisfaction and durability.
Being ISO 13485:2016 certified, Nordent embeds quality control measures into each step of this long process, making sure that the instrument delivered to your door is perfect in every way from laser precision, to perfect balance, to blade angles. Packaging and shipping processes too have been specifically designed for each instrument to ensure that the perfectly balanced instruments are free from damage during shipping from the factory.
Nordent is so proud of our instruments that we choose to offer free lifetime professional sharpening to ensure that you always have the most precise instrument, offering your patients a more comfortable experience and the clinician greater tactile sensitivity and less hand fatigue. If saving time and increasing the patient experience is not enough, we also offer a hassle-free trade in program on XDURA and Relyant instruments with a 30% discount on new purchases. After unpacking your new Nordent instruments make sure to sterilize prior to use and enroll in our free sharpening program. We here at Nordent want to congratulate you on your decision to purchase high quality instruments made in the USA, knowing that you will receive superior service and a life-time of sharpening included in your purchase.