Why is the Resale value of a Cerec unit so low?

Cerec units currently sell for about 100K$ The resale market on these units vary, but after looking at several units for sale it appears the average current sale price on a used unit is 15K$ to 25K$

I saw a unit up for sale by a Patterson office used for 15K$ and another unit used in working condition for 10K$. The used market for dental is usually a substantial drop in price on certain equipment but a 30K$ digital pano in good working condition should still get you about 15K$.

To get down to 15% – 25% of retail price is rough. Usually used equipment holds its value based on a simple equation that someone looks at the new price of something and compares it to an equivalent used pricing. We then do a decision in our mind where we try to decide if the wear of use is worth the decrease in price.

So you would think these working units that produce excellent results would sell like hotcakes. Especially when it is so easy to prove these units work. Simply scan a tooth, prepare a case and produce an inlay. This is very easy as far as showing that the unit works very well.

So why are there plenty of used units on the market with so few buyers?

I think there are some reasons for this that are imposed by the manufacturers of these units.

I called Cerec today to get some information about Warranty.
First of all the only way to do a change of ownership with a Cerec is by getting a Patterson branch office involved and there could be(?) a fee associated with change of ownership. I called a Patterson branch office to get more information on this but they wouldn’t discuss the fees of change of ownership with me unless I was a Patterson doctor.
I did manage to learn some things about the Cerec that explain why it does not retain much value.

First, the standard Cerec warranty is 2 years and the monthly care program is 219$ a month. If you keep this care program you can have your warranty extended for 1 additional year. If you are the owner and have this warranty and service plan then your repairs and maintenance are covered.
So essentially the warranted life of the Cerec is at max 3 years.

This means that after the 3 years you will be required to pay full price for anything that needs to be repaired in the unit. This isn’t the end of the world in most industries because of what is called aftermarket parts.

This is where the second reason for the resale value to be so low is.

In the dental industry specifically on the technology side there is no way to get aftermarket parts except from the OEM. This means any parts you would need to fix your Cerec are only available from Cerec. Meaning Cerec can set any price they want on these parts.
Third reason for poor resale value is that not only are the parts only available from one source but no one is allowed to buy these parts except for the same people that sell the new units. Meaning, there is no opportunity for there to be Cerec repair companies out there except for Patterson. Patterson obviously has a conflict of interest here. Why would they want to provide reasonable yet profitable repair parts when it is much more profitable to sell new units or “Upgrades” that are extremely expensive as well almost 50% of the cost of the original unit.
Fourth reason for poor resale value is very limited competition in the industry. Let’s say you look at all of this information and it bothers you. You don’t like that they control the price, you don’t like their policy on taking care of old units out there and quite simply you are not a fan of how they do business. What are your alternative options?

There is only one in the US and it is the E4D and it is only sold and supported by one company as well.

So my conclusion for the low value of resold Cerecs is that the company that sells them has the ability and desire to make it highly difficult to purchase a used unit and then have any confidence that you could reasonably get the unit repaired in the case of failure.

This is not limited to the Cerec or even milling machines, but this does happen to be one product that has extremely limited options for alternatives.
If this were any other industries the justice department would probably have blocked the agreement between the manufacturer and the reseller. Imagine if Verizon tried to buy half of the cell phone manufacturers and ATT tried to buy the other half. Meaning not only are your service providers limited but you can only purchase cell phones from 2 companies.

Many companies have this anti competitive practice in Dental. Look at products like the BioLase laser. The unit sells for over 60K$ initially but they have inhibited the resale market by charging nearly 8K$ for a change of ownership and putting huge markups on the price of aftermarket parts. For these very expensive dental products they charge so much for replacement parts that the cost of buying all of the replacement components will run you roughly 5 times the cost of purchasing a new unit. This is excellent evidence that they are greatly marking up the price of replacement parts, because obviously it couldn’t cost a manufacturer 5X in parts the initial cost of a unit. Even if you assume extremely low margins you should anticipate that the actual components should cost 20% of the retail price of a unit. Meaning that when you are paying for a part it is at nearly 2,500% markup.

Compare this to any other industry. Let’s say you purchase a Dell computer for 675$. You could purchase all of the components on the open market for 500$ or less and there are literally thousands of companies that are available to do the service on the machine and plenty of availability for parts. With this in mind a computer is fairly inexpensive and major manufacturers offer fairly inexpensive support for them. Extending a 3 year to a 5 year warranty on a dell is only 110$

People might say computers are a specific market and shouldn’t be compared. So I suggest looking at automobiles, CNC milling machines, industrial lasers and several other highly expensive and specialized products.

As another example of this I have looked at a recent incident with a Planmecca pano unit. A doctor had a Planmecca EC and upgraded it to digital with the Planmecca upgrade. This upgrade cost the doctor 30K$. 13 months late the x-ray tube head on the unit failed and the doctor went to Patterson to get a price on replacement and installation. It was going to cost the doctor $6,800 for the unit and $1,000 for installation, if the control board was also bad this was going to be an additional $1,700. I heard this story because I had a film used Planmecca unit for sale. It was cheaper for the doctor to buy the whole used working pano and take parts from it ($2,600 for pano and shipping) then to go to the company he bought the unit from and get parts.
Our company sells lots of used equipment from dentist to dentist. Our doctors are always saddened at the idea that their equipment will generally sell for 20% of its original purchase. Right now I have a doctor with a 3 year old Cerec 3D unit. It is perfect working order and has only been used on about 25 mills total. This unit should be worth a lot considering it is in perfect condition, works great and is being sold by its first owner with records of any repairs available, not to mention the unit has been under warranty for 36 months out of the 37 months it has been owned. In reality we will be lucky to get 15K$ for the unit because it is out of warranty and there is no support available for a 3 year old unit.

I personally think this is unfair for dentists and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or comments about this.

This is just an example video of how we here at Sodium Systems suggest you use your XRay Vision imaging software when presenting treatment to patients.

• Use layouts for your intra oral and digital xray images
• Resize your layout windows side by side
• Position your thumbnail overlay below the layouts
• Xray Vision can be configured to remember these positions
• Use the in place magnifier to draw attention to specific areas

 
[See post to watch Flash video]

Used in Excellent Condition Cerec 3-D Acquisition Center and Milling Station

Although this unit is sold we currently have several 2005 Cerec units available for purchase.  Please email us at sales@sodiumsystems.com or call us at 800-821-8962 for more information.

Sale includes:

• Acquisition Center
• Milling Station
• Wireless Adapter for milling station
• Wireless Access Point
• Blocks in picture
• New Cerec User Kit
• Mark R. Morin 1 Hour Quadrant DVD
• Clinical Notes Manual CD
• Cerec 3D Software CD

This Cerec 3-D Was manufactured in 2006. Was used by a single office and the office estimates a total of 25 millings performed.

The unit is in excellent working condition and is being sold because the office simply couldn’t fit the Cerec into their daily practice use.

See this Cerec unit in use in the video below. Unit will be packaged in a foam mold and shipped with utmost care.
[See post to watch Flash video]

I think the assumption that digital is more expensive than paper is inaccurate.

I’ll lay out the numbers for you and base everything on a 5 year replacement cycle because all the items are warranted for 5 years in this layout.

6 Operatory – 3 FD – 1 Server all with 22″ screens 5 year warranties and installation $18,500 -Our support contract on this system would be 410$ a month with unlimited on site support. The practice management support contract with Open Dental is I think, but I always say think its higher than it is, probably because it seems cheap to me. Lorne please correct me if I am wrong but I think its 160$ a month. Throw in a printer, a document scanner and a film scanner there is another 1400$

So we are at:
375.45 a month loan payment on all your computers, monitors, printers, scanner and film scanner for 5 years.
160$ a month for practice management
410$ a month for unlimited on site service

So going paperless costs you  945.45 a month

Adding digital to this 2 MyRay sensors $14,890 includes imaging software
Adding MyRay Hyperion Digital Pano with 3DTS imaging 47K$ (These prices include installation and training)

$1,225 a month for 60 months at 7% interest, if you have a line of credit with your bank you could probably lower this substantially.

So your fully digital technology nut is $2,170.45 a month. And if you always want to be under warranty and have new just assume this goes on forever. Obviously if you have a smaller practice this price comes down, I am assuming a 2 Hygiene 4 op practice single doctor. that sees 32 patients a day.

Cost of dealing with Paper:

http://www.gosisco.com/costofpullingpaper.shtm

Just dealing with the charts themselves in pay. I typed these numbers into the above calculator. 4 minute seek time (So I hope your employees move fast the study done by the university of Chicago suggests average record seek time to be 7 to 12 minutes because of misfiling, but I wanted to go optimum on this. And your employees wage with overhead $17.50 an hour.
Monthly Cost based on this just pulling and putting back files, lets assume it takes 0 minutes to get the file to the op, write notes in it and such.

Filing monthly cost: $808.27, you’ll notice if your employees cost more than this the amount goes up quick.
Paper Costs: I’ll just say your adding a perio and a regular chart each day.
32 patients a day 5 days a week, 42 weeks a year. I assume you take 10 weeks off if you don’t the number goes up. 13,440 sheets of paper at 20 cents a printed sheet =  $2,688 /12 months =224$ a month in printed paper (20 cents a sheet printed is really cheap, you still have receipts and other pieces of paper you print but you most likely have these if you are paperless as well so I didn’t include them.

So cost of filing and cost of paper= $1,032 a month

Cost of Film(I’ll assume your film processor is free and never breaks down. and that your holders are a wash because you need them for film and digital).

I will do a cost difference here to simplify. You need 1 barrier shield for each digital exam you need 4 films for each film exam.
20 cents for a barrier shield for digital.

http://padentalsupplies.com/x-ray-sensor-covers-universal-rs-barrier.aspx

43 cents for film bitewings

http://padentalsupplies.com/AgfaFilmM2-54E/FSpeed.aspx

25 cents for a clear 4H bitewing mount

http://padentalsupplies.com/Klear-VueX-RayMounts100/Pk4H.aspx

So consumables ignoring the liquids in your processing, mind you these are expensive, but I don’t want an argument about how much fluid one processor uses against another.

digital 20 cents for 4 bitewings
film $1.92 for 4 bitewings

Difference $1.72 extra per 4 bitewings for film assume you have 2000 patients of bitewings a year, most people have more and this ignores any extra PAs you take.

$3,440 a year / 12 = 286$ a month

Cost of Panos assuming you take Panos on 1/4 of your patients a year so 500 of them.
$2.28 a pano X 500 panos = $1,140 in film for panos / 12 months = $95 a month

Filing Film for 2000 patients worth of filing at 4 minutes a filing and 4 minutes to pull film. Remember your staff is lightning quick. That’s 266 hours of pulling and filing a year hopefully done by an assistant so your overhead is only $17.50 an hour on this worker.

387$ a month in filing and pulling film.

So your film cost with your paper and filing cost is:
387$ a month filing and pulling Film
286$ a month in extra film consumables
1,032$ a month in filing and pulling charts
95$ a month in film Panos

$1,800 a month

So quick recap, being totally digital, scrapping everything every 5 years even your digital pano:

$2,170.45

Cost of dealing with paper and taking films:

$1,705 a month

So it is $370 a month more expensive to be fully digital.

Take into account that I am assuming all of your film based hardware was FREE, your film pano was FREE, your film processor was FREE, you get your film processor fluids for FREE, you are in a state where you can still just dump your processing fluids down the drain and don’t have to reclaim them and you can not get more than 5 years of life out of a digital pano.

If you assume 7.5 years of life out of your digital pano it reduces your digital monthly investment by $310 a month. Meaning.

$1,860 a month for full digital

$1,705 a month for a paper office

Remember this also means you are doing scheduling in paper and have zero computers in your office. If you have even 3 computers in your film paper office it adds the Practice management price to the paper office, plus a 3 computer price, plus a printer and scanner. Meaning suddenly your numbers look like this.

3 computers with 5 year warranties and printer $5,000 / 60 months = 83$ a month
Open Dental Monthly fee 160$ a month
Reduced PC support contract 100$ a month

$1,860 a month for full digital practice, all computers, no charts, digital intra oral, digital Pano with 3DTS

$2,048 Partial paper office, PM for billing and scheduling front desk only 3 computers

So with these numbers in mind how is it so expensive to be paperless? I do understand if you use Dexis you will have an additional $28K every 5 years and if you buy from the big boys your Practice Management, PC and Digital Extra  Oral costs could be much much higher, but you don’t have to buy from them.

The end result of my clearly labeled numbers all at Retail pricing shows that an office using film and just front desk computers is actually more expensive than a fully digital office. Even using preferential numbers for the time and costs of using film and paper.

$11K more expensive a year if you wanted to you could dump half of that on great yearly training to make your staff experts at your digital equipment.

Plaza Palooza started off with a big bang on October 2nd, 2011

This event is a great way to get kids and families out to play lots of family friendly games and events.

The event is held every Sunday in front of the York Revolutions stadium from 11am to 3pm. Admission is 4$ and season or family tickets can be purchased.

The purchase price goes to fund both the event itself and the new Penn Park build project going forward in 2012.

York Plaza Palooza Event Page

Sodium Systems strongly believes in supporting the local community and is happy to have the opportunity to volunteer at these events. I had a great time helping out and watching all of the families enjoy the great activities.

I have included some pictures and I hope to see more people there next Sunday

This Fix applies to Dentrix G2 and above

This fix should alleviate issues with the appointment book not refreshing at workstations and issues with errors showing up on screens that say your file is locked open at a different location.

1. Shut down all workstations except for your server.
2. Shut down all Dentrix software on the server, including any Dentrix related apps running in your task manager
3. Run a complete backup of your Dentrix folder and make sure if your Dentrix Data folder isn’t in your Dentrix folder, make sure this Data folder is fully backed up as well.
4. In The Dentrix Folder on your server run _abconv.exe press OKAY to the popup message.
5. Click Convert to Appointment Book and then click OK
6. Now Run _Maint.exe and choose the option clear Machine IDs
7. Now Reboot your server and turn on your workstations and open appointment book one at a time
8. To be fully sure this has worked Turn off opportunistic locking on all machines including the serverThe location of the client registry entry for opportunistic locking has changed from the location in Microsoft Windows NT. In later versions of Windows, you can disable opportunistic locking by setting the following registry entry to 1:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MRXSmb\Parameters\
   OplocksDisabled REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 0 (not disabled)

   Note The OplocksDisabled entry configures Windows clients to request or not to request opportunistic locks on a remote file.

   You can also deny the granting of opportunistic locks by setting the following registry entry to 0:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
   EnableOplocks REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 1 (enabled)

If these Keys don’t exist you will need to make them.

I just wanted to put some example images out of the MyRay Zen Sensor up.

The Zen sensors have cut corners, a two fold filtering system to give crisp high detailed image boasting 25 lp/mm.

The sensors also have an inexpensive option to extend their 2 year warranty to 5 years for under 900$ a sensor at time of purchase.

The other advantage that has made me very happy with the zen sensor is the ability to purchase a device called an XPOD with it. This device is smaller than an IPAD and contains its own imaging software, with a touch screen and the ability to plug the ZEN sensors directly into it so that you can take your in office sensors anywhere you might want to go and capture X-Rays. This especially helpful if you are a specialist and you travel to multiple offices or if you enjoy traveling to other countries and volunteering your services on mission trips. All in all the MyRay sensor solution is very elegant.

Today I was taking the time to put an E2V sensor next to a Dexis sensor for a client of ours so he could compare the size difference and see how much of a change he would be looking at to get out of Dexis.

This doctor has 4 Dexis sensors 2 of them do not work and 2 do. He has spent over 48000$ with Dexis 4 10K$ sensors and the 8K$ he paid for Dexis.Now 5 years down the road Dexis wants him to invest another 24K$ to get 2 new Dexis sensors and that is when he came to us.

I showed him side by side images of Dexis sensor images and E2V sensor images.
I showed him side by side images of the actual sensors next to each other.
I showed him Dexis vs Apteryx Xray Vision (The imaging software I would suggest for any dentist no matter what sensor they have)

What we came to conclude was that the biggest difference between the Dexis platinum and the Direct to USB E2V sensor was the price.
E2V size 2 4995$
Dexis Platinum 12K$

Just think of what Schein and Dexis have cost the doctor in his practice. He is 48K$ in the whole on purchases and over those 5 years he has carried the warranty on 2 of his sensors adding on an additional 3K$ per year minus the first year when the sensors included the warranty. That is another 12K$ so the doctor is 60K$ invested. Lets just think about where the doctor would have been if his rep had actually done what was best for him and told him about some of these much less expensive sensors.

4 E2V sensors – All 4 with 5 year warranties – $23,980
Apteryx Xray Vision with 10 seat licenses – $2595

That means on sensors alone the doctor could have saved $33,425

$33K could cover the doctors computer network, big screen tvs in the patient rooms, intra oral cameras and other pieces of technology that would boost case presentation and staff productivity. But instead that 33K$ just went to Schein making more money.

This astronomical cost difference is caused by Dexis wanting to get rich off of a sensor they paid another company to design and produce, then they middle man it to Henry Schein who wants to get rich off of the already middle manned product.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: David & Patrick’s Comments In The Comments Section

This was an email I recently sent to a doctor involving going digital in a practice that only has a couple of computers and Softdent version 9.

First I would suggest moving from softdent 9 to Open Dental. The new Softdent 14 that is supposed to work with Windows 7 and Server 2008 has continual server message issues and disconnect issues. It is frustrating to no end. Whereas Open Dental is on a new SQL database and runs great. Also Open Dental is free other than the 130$ a month support contract.They can convert his Softdent 9 database to Open Dental.

Secondly, Imaging software. Xray Vision, this is the option you should choose. I have dealt with 159 installs at this point and here is what seperates Xray Vision from other imaging software. 1. It works with every sensor except for Dexis. 2. The database is easily backed up and the Xray Vision server is easily moved when the server hardware is upgraded. 3. The Xray and Intra Oral Camera layouts can be customized and used with multiple different devices including digital cameras.

If you pick the right practice management and the right image management you have already solved 90% of the issues of going digital. If you pick Dentrix or Eaglesoft then you can look forward to Schein and Patterson making many of your purchasing decisions for you. Not to mention both of these programs have an array of issues with Windows 7 and Server 2008 that they claim will be fixed in the next version but never are. Server 2008 has been out for 3 years and the companies still haven’t fixed the errors.

Depending on your number of computers and operatories a traditional server may not be necessary. Server 2008 is a great asset for more than 9 computers. It makes security and management convenient but for an office with less than 9 computers it is an added level of complexity and expense that is not needed for less than 9 computers. We of course would still suggest the machine itself have a server Xeon processor, a quality raid controller for RAID 1 and at least a terabyte of space.

As for computers we do not build them. If an IT professional offers to build you computers for your office then you most likely have the wrong IT professional. No system builder builds enough machines to work out the bugs in their parts choices. Also, no system builder can supply a 3 year or 5 year warranty like Dell can with a next business day guarantee. The trick to buying Dell is to not purchase the cheaper home user versions like the Vostro series. We always use the business lines like the Optiplex series and we always use at least the middle of the processor options. Many people end up with bad Dell computers because their IT guy picked the least amount of RAM, the lowest grade processor and the onboard video card so they could have more markup on their sale.

When it comes to monitors in operatories the important thing is to avoid track mounts or expensive ceiling mounts for getting small screens closer to the patient. Instead, mount a 32” lcd to the wall and to the ceiling and a 12 oclock behind the patient and tie these all into one computer. These 3 monitors will cost less than the traditional track mounted monitor with medical grade monitor.

Network is your next concern. Always run category 6 network cables from the network closet all the way to the computer operatories, front desk PCs and network printers. Many IT companies get lazy and daisy chain switches so they can run one long network run and branch off multiple PCs. This always leads to network slow downs and problems in the future. Absolutely do not use wireless as a network options.

Digital X-Ray sensors are the next most important decision to make. Dexis 12K$ per sensor plus 8K$ for Dexis Image includes a 1 year warranty and additional years warranties are 1500$ per year per sensor. We do not suggest the big names in sensors, Schick, Dexis, Gendex and Kodak are all greatly over priced and in our experience of repairing sensors the only big difference we have found is price not quality. The QuickRay sensor which is the same sensor as the XDR is a direct to USB sensor, modeled after the Dexis Platinum is $4,997 for a size 2 and $4,597 for a size 1. These sensors take gre
at images, are comfortable and are priced well. The imaging software (Xray vision) is around 3500$ with 10 licenses.

If you would like us to quote out the job based on these specs please tell us how many operatories, front desk stations, and private offices the practice has. Also, please tell us the max number of Hygienists and doctors working at any one time.

Sincerely,

Shawn Hall
Co Owner Sodium Systems
Office Phone: 800.821.8962
Email: Shawn@SodiumSystems.com

This post is a response to a question about why sensors break, whether or not new sensor cables on Schicks will be more durable and whether or not sensors in general are affordable.

The thing is that the new cable will have all the problems that the old cable has. The problem is pretty simple you have copper wires that are of a very small gauge so that they can make the cable thin and flexible. To compare for you, a network cable has 24GA wires in it or .511 mm diameter wires and most sensors use 34GA wires or .16mm diameter wires. These are very thin wires and they are fairly long with significant flex points. As the wire flexes about 12,000 times a year the individual copper strands in the cable break down and sometimes disconnect all together. The connections between the sensors and the wire are also very tiny and the solder points themselves sometimes fail.

The problem they have is that although copper is flexible, when it gets that thin and gets moved that much it will inherently fail.

So why not do wireless? Well Schick wireless has several problems, one stuffing the wireless circuitry and a battery onto the back of the sensor. Not a lot of space there and transmission makes heat. The battery has to be very durable if you want it to last all day,
durable and compact equals expensive. The whole rig has to be waterproof as well, which isn’t hard, but it certainly adds to the size and staff already complain about the size of the sensors and placement.

So why not do a thicker cable? We use a replacement cable with 30GA wires, it adds 25% thickness to the overall sensor wire still very flexible but thicker that most modern sensor wires, about the same thickness as old Trophy sensor cables that lasted forever. Guess what we here all the time. “This wire is thicker than our old wire”

So why not make the cable replaceable. Schick did this as well trying to deal with the cable issue, but it has several issues. The connector they had to design to make the cable replaceable is pretty cool but also incredibly prone to failure and corrosion. They should have used Gold connectors sadly they didn’t and corrosion even if not visible to your eye really can screw up a low voltage signal. There second problem was have that connector lock to the sensor. They used a metal housing with very tiny screws to accomplish this, but this combined with the special contacts makes it a very expensive cable, not to mention it is just expensive to have custom cable manufacturing done when you need a connector that is used only for their purposes. Because when you are building blow mold and stamping systems on a small scale, (Schick is a small scale compared to for instance how many USB plugs 3M makes and sells a year. 10,000 compared to millions)

So there replaceable cable is more likely to fail because of how it has to be connected on top of it having the same failure points as their regular cable and it is expensive to make.

—————————————-

With the advent of CMOS sensors direct to USB like Dexis, E2V(XDR, QuickRay, Dentimax), Gendex and others there are now less wires in the cable heading to the sensor and theoretically the cable should be more durable, but there is a whole new downside. There is a lot of data processing that is now taking place right on the back of the sensor as well as the information that needs to be processed by the sensor to interface with the computer. All of this packed into the sensor housing and all very susceptible to voltage and amperage. AKA these babies are easy to burn out from minor voltage irregularities in a USB port. Personally I think every USB sensor especially Dexis sensor should only be plugged into power regulated USB ports. Meaning not only should the USB port be on a powered hub separate from the computer, but that powered hub shouldn’t be plugged into wall AC. Here is why. You wall AC can come out anywhere within 10% of 110Volts AC and still be acceptable to the power company so your computer could be getting 100-120 VAC which gets translated to your USB ports as 4.5VDC to 5.5VDC. This can damage fine circuitry. Most devices can deal with minor power fluctuations without damage but if the circuitry is small enough and there is no gate to let off extra voltage because there isn’t space for one then maybe it burns out the part of the sensor that talks to the computer.

We see a lot of Dexis Platinum’s that have this issue where they no longer tell the computer a sensor serial number. Dexis Platinum’s have to have the correct calibration files installed for the sensor you are using otherwise you get an error that says no calibration file is installed, but even with the utility that is supposed to fix this I saw 19 Dexis Platinum’s last year that were under 3 years old that had this issue and I cannot find a solution for it.

The biggest problem with Dental technology is across the board with all dental technology. The companies that manufacture and sell the technology want to do their best to control every angle of it. Building in roadblocks to repairing and servicing their technology. I believe the goal of Schein, Benco, and Patterson is for there to be no aftermarket for this type of equipment. They don’t want service centers for sensors, cerecs, and expensive lasers. If they can prevent the equipment from being able to be repaired or serviced it is a huge advantage for them , because unlike the auto industry they will never have to worry about fighting a significant used dental technology market. People will pay a good price for a used car because it can be certified and it can be repaired, but buying a used cerec isn’t like that. If you buy a used Cerec and it fails there is no one who can fix it for you and Cerec will punish you for buying a used Cerec by telling you have to pay thousands of dollars in back support fees and an ownership change over before they will even provide you an estimate for servicing the unit.

If you control the servicing of the units you can control the whole after market for them.

So my advice is simple. Buy a sensor that is reasonable if it fails in 4 years. (What exactly is reasonable, well let’s just say the cost of processing film) I’m going to calculate it out over 3 Life Cycles aka 12 Years and I’m not doing this to sell you, but maybe just to make what you have invested come into a less painful light.

So let’s put you on a 4 year life cycle
4 years of 2 Hygiene rooms and 3 Ops and you throw away sensors and computers every 4 years (Which isn’t farfetched, 5 year old computers are usually terrible and slow with all kinds of problems)

2 size 2s plus 1 size 1 for a total of 3 sensors which we discount 10% if you buy 3 at a time. So $12,586.50 in sensors
Apteryx and 10 licenses-Lifetime no re purchase.$3,370 (Apteryx software you can upgrade for free forever with no service contract so it’s like a film processor, buy it once and it will last a good long time. Dexis and other softwares are not like this, they require support contracts.

So sensors and software call it $15,956 (QuickRay Sensors Paired with Apteryx XrayVision)

You’ll need a computer and Monitor in Each Op and someone to install it.(Not counting front desk computers because let’s face it, you need those with or without digital X-Ray
So 5 computer and 5 22″ LCDs with installation we would charge 6K$ for that

Not including the server either because you need that for your front desk as well, but let’s say you did we charge 1995$ for a server and 22″ LCD with installation included in that price.

So let’s say over 3 cycles Meaning 3 cycles of computers and 3 cycles of sensors (12 Years) You would spend
Computers(12 Years-3 sets of computers and servers all installed professionally) =$23,985

3 Cycles of sensors (6 size 2s and 3 size 1s) = $37,759.50

One Time Purchase of Apteryx = $3,370
Total 12 Year cost of computers, servers, sensors getting tossed every 4 years = $65,114
That is a big old hunk of change but let’s just look at film in that time and I’ll be generous

1 Film Processor – $4,800 (you got a great deal on a PA only processor let’s say, Like a new Peri Pro)
2 Hygiene Rooms Worth of Bitewings (2 Rooms X 8 Patients/day X 4BWs/Patient X 4 Days/Week X 46 Weeks Per Year X 12 Years) = 141,312 BWs

I’ll throw in your water, processing fluid and all the PAs you take in your Doctors OP for free to match up with the cost of barrier shields for your sensors and holders, plus IT services. Heck I’ll even throw in the 35000 Bitewing holders you would have used in that time at least $.50 a piece.

So just the BWs you would take in Hygiene and just the cost of the film processor ignoring all the other costs is $61,324

So going digital on a 4 year turnaround is 4K$ more expensive over 12 years. And I think if you consider the costs of processing fluids, and those plastic BW holders you use to keep the x-rays organized into the chart you could see another 20K$ in possible costs on the film side which would give you $140 a month to put towards IT expenses which would be very low if none of your equipment is older than 4 years.

So on this plan you probably are not saving a dime over using film, but you get digital X-Ray, you get the space back that your film processor was stealing from you, you get to not have jugs of chemicals, you also could be paperless at this price reclaiming you a lot of space being used on storing charts.

I guess what I am saying is that the right sensor and computer system can be very comparable compared to film.

But here is where the equation changes. If you are buying Schick for instance?
about 8K$ a sensor chucking them ever 4 years and 120$ a month just in software support fees so you can keep updated with your imaging software it gets our cost of digital up to $89,280 + the computer cost ($23,985) = $113,265

So you can see that your choice of sensor system and software can really change your cost analysis vs. film

So a recap on the 12 years
Film = $61,324
QuickRay+XrayVision =$65,114
Schick+ES Image =$113,265

I’m only talking number here. If you really like the Schick sensors an extra $4,000 a year in cost may be completely reasonable for you and I would understand that as a business owner.

My point of this is not to say digital is inexpensive or that it is going to save you money over film. Maybe if you consider time of employees and such it just might. My point is that it is not that unreasonable what it costs if you pick the right system.

I also want to finish this post by saying Sirona (Schick) makes an excellent sensor and they are a good company. I think you will have the same excellent experience with QuickRay and Apteryx working with us.

I don’t know if this takes the sting out at all, but it might. Also you can see how the price can change if you can get that 5th year out of your systems. For instance sensors, don’t throw them out after 4 years but toss them when they fail. Computers on the other hand have a planned replacement because if you wait till they fail it could cut into your production being down a room, plus you tend to spend more over time if you are paying for added tech fees stretching the life out of computers or trying to get them overnighted in when you are down.

So we are in the sensor repair business as well as being in new technology sales, service, training and installation.

On the sensor repair side we run into a pretty common issue…

We get sensors in for our repair service and have to call the doctor and tell them there is nothing wrong with the sensor. We are often met with pure confusion at this point. Of course we offer advice and any help to get there problems at their office solved and we charge nothing for sensors unless we complete a repair.

So here is something that might be happening to you if you are having problems with your sensor. It’s possible your USB port on your computer or on your USB port have failed or even more confusing is that they can fail intermittently and give you no hint that they are dropping the power to your devices.

Please watch the following video to see how my phone proved what my computer never told me about.

I think the assumption that digital is more expensive than paper is inaccurate.

I’ll lay out the numbers for you and base everything on a 5 year replacement cycle because all the items are warranted for 5 years in this layout.

6 Operatory – 3 FD – 1 Server all with 22″ screens 5 year warranties and installation $18,500 -Our support contract on this system would be 410$ a month with unlimited on site support. The practice management support contract with Open Dental is I think, but I always say think its higher than it is, probably because it seems cheap to me. Lorne please correct me if I am wrong but I think its 160$ a month. Throw in a printer, a document scanner and a film scanner there is another 1400$

So we are at:
375.45 a month loan payment on all your computers, monitors, printers, scanner and film scanner for 5 years.
160$ a month for practice management
410$ a month for unlimited on site service

So going paperless costs you  945.45 a month

Adding digital to this 2 MyRay sensors $14,890 includes imaging software
Adding MyRay Hyperion Digital Pano with 3DTS imaging 47K$ (These prices include installation and training)

$1,225 a month for 60 months at 7% interest, if you have a line of credit with your bank you could probably lower this substantially.

So your fully digital technology nut is $2,170.45 a month. And if you always want to be under warranty and have new just assume this goes on forever. Obviously if you have a smaller practice this price comes down, I am assuming a 2 Hygiene 4 op practice single doctor. that sees 32 patients a day.

Cost of dealing with Paper:

http://www.gosisco.com/costofpullingpaper.shtm

Just dealing with the charts themselves in pay. I typed these numbers into the above calculator. 4 minute seek time (So I hope your employees move fast the study done by the university of Chicago suggests average record seek time to be 7 to 12 minutes because of misfiling, but I wanted to go optimum on this. And your employees wage with overhead $17.50 an hour.
Monthly Cost based on this just pulling and putting back files, lets assume it takes 0 minutes to get the file to the op, write notes in it and such.

Filing monthly cost: $808.27, you’ll notice if your employees cost more than this the amount goes up quick.
Paper Costs: I’ll just say your adding a perio and a regular chart each day.
32 patients a day 5 days a week, 42 weeks a year. I assume you take 10 weeks off if you don’t the number goes up. 13,440 sheets of paper at 20 cents a printed sheet =  $2,688 /12 months =224$ a month in printed paper (20 cents a sheet printed is really cheap, you still have receipts and other pieces of paper you print but you most likely have these if you are paperless as well so I didn’t include them.

So cost of filing and cost of paper= $1,032 a month

Cost of Film(I’ll assume your film processor is free and never breaks down. and that your holders are a wash because you need them for film and digital).

I will do a cost difference here to simplify. You need 1 barrier shield for each digital exam you need 4 films for each film exam.
20 cents for a barrier shield for digital.

http://padentalsupplies.com/x-ray-sensor-covers-universal-rs-barrier.aspx

43 cents for film bitewings

http://padentalsupplies.com/AgfaFilmM2-54E/FSpeed.aspx

25 cents for a clear 4H bitewing mount

http://padentalsupplies.com/Klear-VueX-RayMounts100/Pk4H.aspx

So consumables ignoring the liquids in your processing, mind you these are expensive, but I don’t want an argument about how much fluid one processor uses against another.

digital 20 cents for 4 bitewings
film $1.92 for 4 bitewings

Difference $1.72 extra per 4 bitewings for film assume you have 2000 patients of bitewings a year, most people have more and this ignores any extra PAs you take.

$3,440 a year / 12 = 286$ a month

Cost of Panos assuming you take Panos on 1/4 of your patients a year so 500 of them.
$2.28 a pano X 500 panos = $1,140 in film for panos / 12 months = $95 a month

Filing Film for 2000 patients worth of filing at 4 minutes a filing and 4 minutes to pull film. Remember your staff is lightning quick. That’s 266 hours of pulling and filing a year hopefully done by an assistant so your overhead is only $17.50 an hour on this worker.

387$ a month in filing and pulling film.

So your film cost with your paper and filing cost is:
387$ a month filing and pulling Film
286$ a month in extra film consumables
1,032$ a month in filing and pulling charts
95$ a month in film Panos

$1,800 a month

So quick recap, being totally digital, scrapping everything every 5 years even your digital pano:

$2,170.45

Cost of dealing with paper and taking films:

$1,705 a month

So it is $370 a month more expensive to be fully digital.

Take into account that I am assuming all of your film based hardware was FREE, your film pano was FREE, your film processor was FREE, you get your film processor fluids for FREE, you are in a state where you can still just dump your processing fluids down the drain and don’t have to reclaim them and you can not get more than 5 years of life out of a digital pano.

If you assume 7.5 years of life out of your digital pano it reduces your digital monthly investment by $310 a month. Meaning.

$1,860 a month for full digital

$1,705 a month for a paper office

Remember this also means you are doing scheduling in paper and have zero computers in your office. If you have even 3 computers in your film paper office it adds the Practice management price to the paper office, plus a 3 computer price, plus a printer and scanner. Meaning suddenly your numbers look like this.

3 computers with 5 year warranties and printer $5,000 / 60 months = 83$ a month
Open Dental Monthly fee 160$ a month
Reduced PC support contract 100$ a month

$1,860 a month for full digital practice, all computers, no charts, digital intra oral, digital Pano with 3DTS

$2,048 Partial paper office, PM for billing and scheduling front desk only 3 computers

So with these numbers in mind how is it so expensive to be paperless? I do understand if you use Dexis you will have an additional $28K every 5 years and if you buy from the big boys your Practice Management, PC and Digital Extra  Oral costs could be much much higher, but you don’t have to buy from them.

The end result of my clearly labeled numbers all at Retail pricing shows that an office using film and just front desk computers is actually more expensive than a fully digital office. Even using preferential numbers for the time and costs of using film and paper.

$11K more expensive a year if you wanted to you could dump half of that on great yearly training to make your staff experts at your digital equipment.

Plaza Palooza started off with a big bang on October 2nd, 2011

This event is a great way to get kids and families out to play lots of family friendly games and events.

The event is held every Sunday in front of the York Revolutions stadium from 11am to 3pm. Admission is 4$ and season or family tickets can be purchased.

The purchase price goes to fund both the event itself and the new Penn Park build project going forward in 2012.

York Plaza Palooza Event Page

Sodium Systems strongly believes in supporting the local community and is happy to have the opportunity to volunteer at these events. I had a great time helping out and watching all of the families enjoy the great activities.

I have included some pictures and I hope to see more people there next Sunday

This Fix applies to Dentrix G2 and above

This fix should alleviate issues with the appointment book not refreshing at workstations and issues with errors showing up on screens that say your file is locked open at a different location.

1. Shut down all workstations except for your server.
2. Shut down all Dentrix software on the server, including any Dentrix related apps running in your task manager
3. Run a complete backup of your Dentrix folder and make sure if your Dentrix Data folder isn’t in your Dentrix folder, make sure this Data folder is fully backed up as well.
4. In The Dentrix Folder on your server run _abconv.exe press OKAY to the popup message.
5. Click Convert to Appointment Book and then click OK
6. Now Run _Maint.exe and choose the option clear Machine IDs
7. Now Reboot your server and turn on your workstations and open appointment book one at a time
8. To be fully sure this has worked Turn off opportunistic locking on all machines including the serverThe location of the client registry entry for opportunistic locking has changed from the location in Microsoft Windows NT. In later versions of Windows, you can disable opportunistic locking by setting the following registry entry to 1:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MRXSmb\Parameters\
   OplocksDisabled REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 0 (not disabled)

   Note The OplocksDisabled entry configures Windows clients to request or not to request opportunistic locks on a remote file.

   You can also deny the granting of opportunistic locks by setting the following registry entry to 0:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
   EnableOplocks REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 1 (enabled)

If these Keys don’t exist you will need to make them.

I just wanted to put some example images out of the MyRay Zen Sensor up.

The Zen sensors have cut corners, a two fold filtering system to give crisp high detailed image boasting 25 lp/mm.

The sensors also have an inexpensive option to extend their 2 year warranty to 5 years for under 900$ a sensor at time of purchase.

The other advantage that has made me very happy with the zen sensor is the ability to purchase a device called an XPOD with it. This device is smaller than an IPAD and contains its own imaging software, with a touch screen and the ability to plug the ZEN sensors directly into it so that you can take your in office sensors anywhere you might want to go and capture X-Rays. This especially helpful if you are a specialist and you travel to multiple offices or if you enjoy traveling to other countries and volunteering your services on mission trips. All in all the MyRay sensor solution is very elegant.

Today I was taking the time to put an E2V sensor next to a Dexis sensor for a client of ours so he could compare the size difference and see how much of a change he would be looking at to get out of Dexis.

This doctor has 4 Dexis sensors 2 of them do not work and 2 do. He has spent over 48000$ with Dexis 4 10K$ sensors and the 8K$ he paid for Dexis.Now 5 years down the road Dexis wants him to invest another 24K$ to get 2 new Dexis sensors and that is when he came to us.

I showed him side by side images of Dexis sensor images and E2V sensor images.
I showed him side by side images of the actual sensors next to each other.
I showed him Dexis vs Apteryx Xray Vision (The imaging software I would suggest for any dentist no matter what sensor they have)

What we came to conclude was that the biggest difference between the Dexis platinum and the Direct to USB E2V sensor was the price.
E2V size 2 4995$
Dexis Platinum 12K$

Just think of what Schein and Dexis have cost the doctor in his practice. He is 48K$ in the whole on purchases and over those 5 years he has carried the warranty on 2 of his sensors adding on an additional 3K$ per year minus the first year when the sensors included the warranty. That is another 12K$ so the doctor is 60K$ invested. Lets just think about where the doctor would have been if his rep had actually done what was best for him and told him about some of these much less expensive sensors.

4 E2V sensors – All 4 with 5 year warranties – $23,980
Apteryx Xray Vision with 10 seat licenses – $2595

That means on sensors alone the doctor could have saved $33,425

$33K could cover the doctors computer network, big screen tvs in the patient rooms, intra oral cameras and other pieces of technology that would boost case presentation and staff productivity. But instead that 33K$ just went to Schein making more money.

This astronomical cost difference is caused by Dexis wanting to get rich off of a sensor they paid another company to design and produce, then they middle man it to Henry Schein who wants to get rich off of the already middle manned product.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: David & Patrick’s Comments In The Comments Section

This was an email I recently sent to a doctor involving going digital in a practice that only has a couple of computers and Softdent version 9.

First I would suggest moving from softdent 9 to Open Dental. The new Softdent 14 that is supposed to work with Windows 7 and Server 2008 has continual server message issues and disconnect issues. It is frustrating to no end. Whereas Open Dental is on a new SQL database and runs great. Also Open Dental is free other than the 130$ a month support contract.They can convert his Softdent 9 database to Open Dental.

Secondly, Imaging software. Xray Vision, this is the option you should choose. I have dealt with 159 installs at this point and here is what seperates Xray Vision from other imaging software. 1. It works with every sensor except for Dexis. 2. The database is easily backed up and the Xray Vision server is easily moved when the server hardware is upgraded. 3. The Xray and Intra Oral Camera layouts can be customized and used with multiple different devices including digital cameras.

If you pick the right practice management and the right image management you have already solved 90% of the issues of going digital. If you pick Dentrix or Eaglesoft then you can look forward to Schein and Patterson making many of your purchasing decisions for you. Not to mention both of these programs have an array of issues with Windows 7 and Server 2008 that they claim will be fixed in the next version but never are. Server 2008 has been out for 3 years and the companies still haven’t fixed the errors.

Depending on your number of computers and operatories a traditional server may not be necessary. Server 2008 is a great asset for more than 9 computers. It makes security and management convenient but for an office with less than 9 computers it is an added level of complexity and expense that is not needed for less than 9 computers. We of course would still suggest the machine itself have a server Xeon processor, a quality raid controller for RAID 1 and at least a terabyte of space.

As for computers we do not build them. If an IT professional offers to build you computers for your office then you most likely have the wrong IT professional. No system builder builds enough machines to work out the bugs in their parts choices. Also, no system builder can supply a 3 year or 5 year warranty like Dell can with a next business day guarantee. The trick to buying Dell is to not purchase the cheaper home user versions like the Vostro series. We always use the business lines like the Optiplex series and we always use at least the middle of the processor options. Many people end up with bad Dell computers because their IT guy picked the least amount of RAM, the lowest grade processor and the onboard video card so they could have more markup on their sale.

When it comes to monitors in operatories the important thing is to avoid track mounts or expensive ceiling mounts for getting small screens closer to the patient. Instead, mount a 32” lcd to the wall and to the ceiling and a 12 oclock behind the patient and tie these all into one computer. These 3 monitors will cost less than the traditional track mounted monitor with medical grade monitor.

Network is your next concern. Always run category 6 network cables from the network closet all the way to the computer operatories, front desk PCs and network printers. Many IT companies get lazy and daisy chain switches so they can run one long network run and branch off multiple PCs. This always leads to network slow downs and problems in the future. Absolutely do not use wireless as a network options.

Digital X-Ray sensors are the next most important decision to make. Dexis 12K$ per sensor plus 8K$ for Dexis Image includes a 1 year warranty and additional years warranties are 1500$ per year per sensor. We do not suggest the big names in sensors, Schick, Dexis, Gendex and Kodak are all greatly over priced and in our experience of repairing sensors the only big difference we have found is price not quality. The QuickRay sensor which is the same sensor as the XDR is a direct to USB sensor, modeled after the Dexis Platinum is $4,997 for a size 2 and $4,597 for a size 1. These sensors take gre
at images, are comfortable and are priced well. The imaging software (Xray vision) is around 3500$ with 10 licenses.

If you would like us to quote out the job based on these specs please tell us how many operatories, front desk stations, and private offices the practice has. Also, please tell us the max number of Hygienists and doctors working at any one time.

Sincerely,

Shawn Hall
Co Owner Sodium Systems
Office Phone: 800.821.8962
Email: Shawn@SodiumSystems.com

This post is a response to a question about why sensors break, whether or not new sensor cables on Schicks will be more durable and whether or not sensors in general are affordable.

The thing is that the new cable will have all the problems that the old cable has. The problem is pretty simple you have copper wires that are of a very small gauge so that they can make the cable thin and flexible. To compare for you, a network cable has 24GA wires in it or .511 mm diameter wires and most sensors use 34GA wires or .16mm diameter wires. These are very thin wires and they are fairly long with significant flex points. As the wire flexes about 12,000 times a year the individual copper strands in the cable break down and sometimes disconnect all together. The connections between the sensors and the wire are also very tiny and the solder points themselves sometimes fail.

The problem they have is that although copper is flexible, when it gets that thin and gets moved that much it will inherently fail.

So why not do wireless? Well Schick wireless has several problems, one stuffing the wireless circuitry and a battery onto the back of the sensor. Not a lot of space there and transmission makes heat. The battery has to be very durable if you want it to last all day,
durable and compact equals expensive. The whole rig has to be waterproof as well, which isn’t hard, but it certainly adds to the size and staff already complain about the size of the sensors and placement.

So why not do a thicker cable? We use a replacement cable with 30GA wires, it adds 25% thickness to the overall sensor wire still very flexible but thicker that most modern sensor wires, about the same thickness as old Trophy sensor cables that lasted forever. Guess what we here all the time. “This wire is thicker than our old wire”

So why not make the cable replaceable. Schick did this as well trying to deal with the cable issue, but it has several issues. The connector they had to design to make the cable replaceable is pretty cool but also incredibly prone to failure and corrosion. They should have used Gold connectors sadly they didn’t and corrosion even if not visible to your eye really can screw up a low voltage signal. There second problem was have that connector lock to the sensor. They used a metal housing with very tiny screws to accomplish this, but this combined with the special contacts makes it a very expensive cable, not to mention it is just expensive to have custom cable manufacturing done when you need a connector that is used only for their purposes. Because when you are building blow mold and stamping systems on a small scale, (Schick is a small scale compared to for instance how many USB plugs 3M makes and sells a year. 10,000 compared to millions)

So there replaceable cable is more likely to fail because of how it has to be connected on top of it having the same failure points as their regular cable and it is expensive to make.

—————————————-

With the advent of CMOS sensors direct to USB like Dexis, E2V(XDR, QuickRay, Dentimax), Gendex and others there are now less wires in the cable heading to the sensor and theoretically the cable should be more durable, but there is a whole new downside. There is a lot of data processing that is now taking place right on the back of the sensor as well as the information that needs to be processed by the sensor to interface with the computer. All of this packed into the sensor housing and all very susceptible to voltage and amperage. AKA these babies are easy to burn out from minor voltage irregularities in a USB port. Personally I think every USB sensor especially Dexis sensor should only be plugged into power regulated USB ports. Meaning not only should the USB port be on a powered hub separate from the computer, but that powered hub shouldn’t be plugged into wall AC. Here is why. You wall AC can come out anywhere within 10% of 110Volts AC and still be acceptable to the power company so your computer could be getting 100-120 VAC which gets translated to your USB ports as 4.5VDC to 5.5VDC. This can damage fine circuitry. Most devices can deal with minor power fluctuations without damage but if the circuitry is small enough and there is no gate to let off extra voltage because there isn’t space for one then maybe it burns out the part of the sensor that talks to the computer.

We see a lot of Dexis Platinum’s that have this issue where they no longer tell the computer a sensor serial number. Dexis Platinum’s have to have the correct calibration files installed for the sensor you are using otherwise you get an error that says no calibration file is installed, but even with the utility that is supposed to fix this I saw 19 Dexis Platinum’s last year that were under 3 years old that had this issue and I cannot find a solution for it.

The biggest problem with Dental technology is across the board with all dental technology. The companies that manufacture and sell the technology want to do their best to control every angle of it. Building in roadblocks to repairing and servicing their technology. I believe the goal of Schein, Benco, and Patterson is for there to be no aftermarket for this type of equipment. They don’t want service centers for sensors, cerecs, and expensive lasers. If they can prevent the equipment from being able to be repaired or serviced it is a huge advantage for them , because unlike the auto industry they will never have to worry about fighting a significant used dental technology market. People will pay a good price for a used car because it can be certified and it can be repaired, but buying a used cerec isn’t like that. If you buy a used Cerec and it fails there is no one who can fix it for you and Cerec will punish you for buying a used Cerec by telling you have to pay thousands of dollars in back support fees and an ownership change over before they will even provide you an estimate for servicing the unit.

If you control the servicing of the units you can control the whole after market for them.

So my advice is simple. Buy a sensor that is reasonable if it fails in 4 years. (What exactly is reasonable, well let’s just say the cost of processing film) I’m going to calculate it out over 3 Life Cycles aka 12 Years and I’m not doing this to sell you, but maybe just to make what you have invested come into a less painful light.

So let’s put you on a 4 year life cycle
4 years of 2 Hygiene rooms and 3 Ops and you throw away sensors and computers every 4 years (Which isn’t farfetched, 5 year old computers are usually terrible and slow with all kinds of problems)

2 size 2s plus 1 size 1 for a total of 3 sensors which we discount 10% if you buy 3 at a time. So $12,586.50 in sensors
Apteryx and 10 licenses-Lifetime no re purchase.$3,370 (Apteryx software you can upgrade for free forever with no service contract so it’s like a film processor, buy it once and it will last a good long time. Dexis and other softwares are not like this, they require support contracts.

So sensors and software call it $15,956 (QuickRay Sensors Paired with Apteryx XrayVision)

You’ll need a computer and Monitor in Each Op and someone to install it.(Not counting front desk computers because let’s face it, you need those with or without digital X-Ray
So 5 computer and 5 22″ LCDs with installation we would charge 6K$ for that

Not including the server either because you need that for your front desk as well, but let’s say you did we charge 1995$ for a server and 22″ LCD with installation included in that price.

So let’s say over 3 cycles Meaning 3 cycles of computers and 3 cycles of sensors (12 Years) You would spend
Computers(12 Years-3 sets of computers and servers all installed professionally) =$23,985

3 Cycles of sensors (6 size 2s and 3 size 1s) = $37,759.50

One Time Purchase of Apteryx = $3,370
Total 12 Year cost of computers, servers, sensors getting tossed every 4 years = $65,114
That is a big old hunk of change but let’s just look at film in that time and I’ll be generous

1 Film Processor – $4,800 (you got a great deal on a PA only processor let’s say, Like a new Peri Pro)
2 Hygiene Rooms Worth of Bitewings (2 Rooms X 8 Patients/day X 4BWs/Patient X 4 Days/Week X 46 Weeks Per Year X 12 Years) = 141,312 BWs

I’ll throw in your water, processing fluid and all the PAs you take in your Doctors OP for free to match up with the cost of barrier shields for your sensors and holders, plus IT services. Heck I’ll even throw in the 35000 Bitewing holders you would have used in that time at least $.50 a piece.

So just the BWs you would take in Hygiene and just the cost of the film processor ignoring all the other costs is $61,324

So going digital on a 4 year turnaround is 4K$ more expensive over 12 years. And I think if you consider the costs of processing fluids, and those plastic BW holders you use to keep the x-rays organized into the chart you could see another 20K$ in possible costs on the film side which would give you $140 a month to put towards IT expenses which would be very low if none of your equipment is older than 4 years.

So on this plan you probably are not saving a dime over using film, but you get digital X-Ray, you get the space back that your film processor was stealing from you, you get to not have jugs of chemicals, you also could be paperless at this price reclaiming you a lot of space being used on storing charts.

I guess what I am saying is that the right sensor and computer system can be very comparable compared to film.

But here is where the equation changes. If you are buying Schick for instance?
about 8K$ a sensor chucking them ever 4 years and 120$ a month just in software support fees so you can keep updated with your imaging software it gets our cost of digital up to $89,280 + the computer cost ($23,985) = $113,265

So you can see that your choice of sensor system and software can really change your cost analysis vs. film

So a recap on the 12 years
Film = $61,324
QuickRay+XrayVision =$65,114
Schick+ES Image =$113,265

I’m only talking number here. If you really like the Schick sensors an extra $4,000 a year in cost may be completely reasonable for you and I would understand that as a business owner.

My point of this is not to say digital is inexpensive or that it is going to save you money over film. Maybe if you consider time of employees and such it just might. My point is that it is not that unreasonable what it costs if you pick the right system.

I also want to finish this post by saying Sirona (Schick) makes an excellent sensor and they are a good company. I think you will have the same excellent experience with QuickRay and Apteryx working with us.

I don’t know if this takes the sting out at all, but it might. Also you can see how the price can change if you can get that 5th year out of your systems. For instance sensors, don’t throw them out after 4 years but toss them when they fail. Computers on the other hand have a planned replacement because if you wait till they fail it could cut into your production being down a room, plus you tend to spend more over time if you are paying for added tech fees stretching the life out of computers or trying to get them overnighted in when you are down.

So we are in the sensor repair business as well as being in new technology sales, service, training and installation.

On the sensor repair side we run into a pretty common issue…

We get sensors in for our repair service and have to call the doctor and tell them there is nothing wrong with the sensor. We are often met with pure confusion at this point. Of course we offer advice and any help to get there problems at their office solved and we charge nothing for sensors unless we complete a repair.

So here is something that might be happening to you if you are having problems with your sensor. It’s possible your USB port on your computer or on your USB port have failed or even more confusing is that they can fail intermittently and give you no hint that they are dropping the power to your devices.

Please watch the following video to see how my phone proved what my computer never told me about.

Here at Sodium Systems LLC we do our best to help customers with Dexis sensor repair. We perform Dexis Classic Sensor repair and Dexis Platinum Sensor Repair in house and we are not affiliated with Dexis or there parent company in any way. If you have a Dexis sensor you would like repaired. Just follow this link to Dexis Sensor Repair .

Dexis sensor repair can be difficult because the old classic sensor uses a special 19 pin round connector that requires a high degree of skill to solder to and can be difficult to find and purchase. We also have gone to great efforts to have our own custom cable manufactured that we believe will be both very good for signal transfer and durability. The key was to also insure the cable would be very thin and flexible. if you see other companies advertising that they do dental sensor repair or Dexis sensor repair, one big question to ask them is if they are performing a full cable replacement or simply cutting out bad sections and leaving you with your old cable. These inline splice repairs will result in a section of failure and a greater amount of noise in the signal because a break and re splice always causes signal degradation in a copper wire.

Also, many of the sites out there advertising Dexis sensor repair are not performing the repairs in house, they are receiving your sensor and then having a non employee do the repair. I would suggest getting it in writing that only employees of the company you are sending your very expensive sensor off to are going to have access to your sensor.

There are other aspects of Dexis sensor repair that are important. What type of facility is the repair being performed in? How many hours of experience does the repair technician have with repairing your sensor. Sodium Systems can show that its Dexis Sensor Repair technicians have over 2000 hours of Dexis Sensor Repair experience. That is a real number and to put it on this blog in print means it is true. Other companies may use phrases like “very experienced”, “lots of experience”, “most experience” which are all ways to avoid actually telling you how much experience they have because if they had to list in real hours they would most have 100 times less experience. There have been several companies with absolutely no experience that just know how the internet works that if they post up a page and make general claims real companies, with real technicians and real experience can not do anything about it because a general claim of “very experienced” is always defend able. They can say they did 1 sensor and feel that is “very experienced”.

So with Dexis sensor repair, Dexis Platinum Repair, and Dexis Classic repair I have some questions for you to ask any company who is offering you repair services (and get it in an email because people will say anything over the phone). This is very very important because if the repair is not performed correctly the technician could actually destroy what could have been a repairable sensor.
1. Will an employee of your company be providing the repair services?

2. How many hours of experience does your technician have repairing Dental Xray Sensors or get specific and ask them how much experience their technician has repairing Dexis Sensors?

3. How many Dexis Sensor Repairs has the employee performed?

4. Does the company do a full cable replacement or are they splicing your cable?

5. Are they using anti static devices, do they have calibrated digitally controlled temperature soldering irons, are they using non corrosive flux, are they using high silver low led solder for best connection, and finally are they using a potting flux and silicone protector to both insure the durability of the sensor and the ability to re repair the sensor years down the road if it is needed.

I believe that if you keep these things in mind you can get your Dexis sensor repair done right and save yourself thousands of dollars over purchasing a new sensor.