It's safe: The customer of the day

[jmowreader]

Last night, a customer came in to buy an air compressor for his brother's dental practice. (Dentists' high-speed tools, like their drills and oral-hygienists' tools, all run on compressed air.) His brother's practice is very large, so he bought a very large air compressor.

This afternoon, his brother came in to get the compressor. He looks exactly like the dentist from Marathon Man.

There is no point to this.

[bearfan454]

1. Is it safe ?

[Greyhound]

2. Lord Larry Olivier?

[fishnfla]

3. you mean.....?

its safe

[jmowreader]

4. It's safer than it was before I sold it to him

The Marathon Man guy was running his whole practice--nine opertories (the room with the dental chair and the other equipment in it) for five dentists plus four hygienists' rooms--off a pancake air compressor.

Pancake air compressors are designed for impulse use--specifically, small nailers. You're not supposed to draw air continuously from one because it will burn out.

Imagine: you're sitting in the chair getting a root canal done. The dentist is using a "painless" handpiece and he's about halfway up your molar. The reason that handpiece is "painless" is because the constant flow of air into it is spinning the turbine inside at an extreme rate of speed. If his cheap-ass compressor burns out because it's always running and it wasn't designed for a 100-percent duty cycle (no pancake compressor is), he won't know it because the compressor is in a little shed out behind the practice. When the air pressure drops, so will the turbine speed and you're really gonna be in pain. With this huge compressor, even if he fries it in the middle of a procedure, there's so much air in it he can probably get through the day.

I also sold him a water heater timer, and this is really going to make his life easy. His office opens at 9am--all dentists in Fayetteville do. He'll set his timer to come on at 7:30. When he gets in at 8am, he'll have air waiting for him.