How many dentists does it take to change a light bulb?


How many dentists does it take to change a light bulb?......Just one but it helps if he has his favorite repairman on speed dial!

Towards the middle of my day my Belmont Excalibur operatory light blinked out. Fortunately for me I mostly use my Orascoptic light, that is attached to my loupes, to help me see intraorally. Although I have a spare bulb for my dental unit and on a good day I’m pretty handy, I thought I should wait until the end of my day to try to change the bulb.

I read the instruction supplied with my Belmont unit and it seemed fairly straight forward. All went well at first... I got the cover off , I loosened the diabolical spring holding the light bulb and all I had left , according to the Belmont instructions,  was to slide the metal piece at the end of a wire attached  to the bulb out of its housing and slide a new one in.  
That sounded easy, but unfortunately the instructions left out that the metal piece was hermetically sealed by a blue plastic housing and it seemed to me that the only way I could complete my swap was to cut this blue plastic insulator to get access to the metal connector that needed to slide out. I wasn't about to take a knife to my light without confirmation from someone "in the know" .




Fortunately for me, Simon my Schein repair guy got my text with this photo and explained I should cut the plastic, make the switch and then use electrical tape to insulate the connection.





Once I had this green light, I used my Bard Parker (a sharp scalpel) to cut open this blue plastic and complete the repair. It took me Thirty five minutes in total to make the light operational again, Clearly Belmont's instructions had been incomplete and I owe my success to Simon- he really saved the day!





from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-many-dentists-does-it-take-to.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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