For the colleagues in the dental business, we are trained as dentists and not technicians. We are…read moreusually bitter that anything sold to us in this field comes with a huuuge price hike.
If you talk to a rep from schein, Patterson, etc, they want to sell you nice new equipment. So usually a single operatory with the dental chair, stools, delivery unit, will cost about $15-25k new (dci-adec). And you all know that is being modest. But with that $15-25k you get white glove delivery, all the cords tucked away, and a training session on what each button does. I'm a rather buy it and I'll figure it out type of guy, and hate paying premium for someone showing me how to regulate water pressure or programming a chair.
Estrada dental sells you "Used" dental equipment. So you gotta do your own research. If you buy a chair or a chair part made in 1995, it's 25 years old!! So even if it looks new from hank, I might break on you or need a replacement part or two. So just know what you are buying. For me, we bought 7 pelton crane spirit 3000's and 3 boyd chairs. They were rewrapped in a custom green upholstery. These guys will make these chairs look brand new. The upholstery team is top notch. The pelton cranes chair I bought refurbished, but bought NEW delivery units from DCI that they installed onto the chairs. I also got a midmark air compressor, and bunch of doctor and assistant stools. Advice when buying used dental: anything with lots of moving parts: buy new or slightly used. Like delivery units. Chairs and stools: if they're new upholstery, and the hydraulic works great, why spend over triple for new?
BUT!!!! Be very ready to grab a wrench or have to buy a replacement part. For example, the chair pad controls on the pelton cranes are very annoying. They work, but i spent $450 per chair to buy different foot chair controls. So be ready to spend a few bucks to fix it up more to your liking. So I spent about $10k an operatory. Yes. Some stools were weird, some chair arms swayed a bit. I swapped out some stools, and even swapped out 3 chairs because we wanted them to go "lower".
Hank will give you a sweet deal, but I'd be ready to spend 10% more and some time to adjust it by yourself. So we have 10 operatories. I can get away with a chair or two needing adjustments and not being used temporarily. After everything was installed, it took like month and a half to work out kinks. If you buy new, that may be like 2 weeks.
Darin, who installed everything, is a very knowledgeable guy. He runs around and fixes and installs everything, but is usually super busy! But again, know you are buying "used". It's not for everybody. But I feel we saved about 100k. So with that saved money, we were able to buy a NEW CBCT machine.
If you are pretty handy your self and can adjust some dental chair issues yourself, go with hank. If you don't know how to swap out a 3 way syringe, or tighten a swinging radius arm, maybe better to pay the premium and buy new.
But I am very pleased I went with estrada dental. Just remember! Do your own research!
See for yourself the pix of their handy work!