Feeling the Whirr When the Dental Drill Hits

Ever sat down on the chair at your dental practice and saw a small handheld device that had a number of attachments in a nearby box? The device is a dental rotary drill and the attachments are simply known as dental burs, rotary file bits that are made for various purposes in a specific field. When you feeling something that hits your teeth when the dentist uses the drill, that’s the burr doing the work.

Each burr, which may be no longer than the front third of any of your fingers, has three parts – the head, the neck, and shank. The head contains the main parts that come into contact with the subject surface. The neck is the support arm while the shank is the main “driveshaft” linking the entire burr to the drill. The item is fundamentally the same as those used in household rotary drill tool sets. When a dentist needs to replace one bur with another, a small clamp or the bur changer is used to lock it in.  

Burrs come in multiple shapes and sizes, all based on various preferences set by the dentist himself. They include pointed heads, which come in coarse or extra coarse. However, the vast number of drill bits is so mind-boggling, that the International Organization for Standardization has stepped in to properly catalog them by number and design.