Wrapped week 2 of chairside testing on a cordless piezo with inline force sensing that buzzes when you exceed about 0.8 N; across 12 perio maintenance appointments we cut average time by about 6 minutes with fewer force spikes logged. A couple hygienists found the handle buzz distracting — would an LED ring or a subtle foot‑pedal pulse be a better cue in your hands?
I’d take a subtle foot‑pedal pulse over a handle ‘buzz’ — vibration makes me choke up and over‑grip; give a soft two‑tick cue at about 0.7 N and a steadier feel at ‘0.8 N’ so it’s like a parking sensor for calculus. LED ring as backup is fine, but under loupes lights it can wash out, so let us dim and color‑ramp it. Could you let us set thresholds per tip or mode?
My eyes stay in the sulcus, so an LED ring won’t help; +1 to @gholmes99 on a pedal cue, but make it a tiny two‑tick with about 250 ms hysteresis and only when >0.7 N is sustained, then auto‑trim power about 10% if we’re still over 0.8 N — think lane‑assist nudge, not rumble strip… Any chance to set different thresholds for anteriors vs molars?
Seeing more remote lab gigs too, but the “real-time and might expire” part is no joke — , I missed one last week by a day… What got me callbacks was sharing a tiny portfolio of Exocad/3Shape cases and noting my home setup (calibrated monitor + secure file transfer). If you’re filtering CAD/CAM on the NADL board, I’ve noticed fresh posts early Mondays: https://nadl.org — anyone else seeing midweek drops too?
The “6 minutes” is legit, but I’d drop the grip buzz and make the threshold adjustable and start below “0.8 N” (ultrasonic tends to feel best around 0.5–0.7 N; see ultrasonic scaler lateral force - Search Results - PubMed). Give a brief, held-pressure-only power dip the operator feels at the tip instead of the handle so it doesn’t trigger a death grip. Can you do that without heat spikes or nuking battery life?