Talk:Dental curing light

Uncovered details

 * Is the use of an orange-tinted shield intended to prevent harm to the human eye? Or is it just to prevent the operator from being dazzled during filling placement? The article suggests that modern curing lights are only visible spectrum light, and no longer contain ultraviolet. See also High-energy visible light.
 * blue, violet and ultraviolet does not pass the yellow or orange filter. as simple as that.


 * If the light is visible spectrum then could a filling be cured by reflecting the beam of the curing light in a standard mirror? Although it would be farther away from the light source.
 * not an issue anyway, you have light conducting fibres to transport the light to any place.


 * Placement of light curing filling materials is done in small increments because light from a curing light cannot effectively cure more than 2-3 mm thickness of filling material. When the material sets it undergoes contraction ("polymerization shrinkage") which also mandates incremental placement so as to prevent voids. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2017 (UTC)


 * should be done. anyway, the resin may be ramoved from, for example the toothe enamel for some time relatively easily even after initial hardening and further hardening and adhesion progresses over period of hours and days. The thickness of 2-3 mm may be even too thick, but it is used because dentists are humans too and don't have much time. The ability of the light to permeate the ceramic-filled acrylate isn't the best, the absorbed energy from the beam drops exponentially in the thickness.


 * The whole LED description is overly primitive. Everybody know what LEDs are in the 1985. The explanation only confuses it because the newer high efficiency LEDs need much more than a simple chemistry requirement, dislocations, doping, thermal processing, crystal structure, cut, etc. play a higher role. The article does not explain or show modern stations, where the pen with the light is integral to the whole station and the light is entirely conducted via a light conducting cable. This allows for limitless light power as the LED size cooling is not limited in size. Next, the development of 380nm (new UV), the 400 nm, 405nm violet blue, royal blue, and the 420nm blue light LEDs of extreme conversion efficiency was vital. Once a 1-watt single-chip ~400nm blue LED with about 0.3W of radiated light was high-tech, these days blue LED chips of 5W or even 10W used for white lighting are a standard stock from companies such as CREE. A note: white light is generated by a blue LED chip light filtering trough a yellow or yellow-orange or yellow-orange-red phosphorus, which converts a portion of the narrow spectrum blue light to a wide-spectrum and these lights mixed are white enough.

So, in the chase of the Blue LED and white lighting, the dental blue light hardening was enabled as a side-product of the research. While the research and development, manufacture of the blue LED was and is high tech, its use is not and any child can install and use one.