Powered Toothbrushes

As well as investigating the vibrations of ultrasonic scalers, the team are now gathering a large amount of data on the operation characteristics of powered toothbrushes.

Investigations have been performed under a variety of operating conditions to assess designs of toothbrushes whose vibrations are most altered by changes in load, application of toothpaste etc.

To date, the data produced provides a unique insight into the motion of toothbrush heads and bristles as they oscillate in air and how these oscillations change when they contact tooth surfaces.

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Animated vibration data illustrating the difference between bristle movement of loaded and unloaded PTBs is available here (1.7Mb, Macromedia flash plugin required).