A Comparison of the Machining Efficiency of Two Brands of Stainless Steel Endodontic Hand Files

The purpose of this study was to compare the machining efficiency of a flexible stainless steel K-type hand file recently introduced by Brasseler USA (“F-Style files”), with that of a well-studied Endodontic instrument (“Flex-o-files,” Maillefer Dentsply), that has been on the market for more than 20 years. The comparison of machining efficiencies of these two brands of files was conducted on both dentin and plexiglas substrates, using an apparatus that allowed a constant force to be applied from each file being tested. The results indicated that the Brasseler instruments had poorer machining efficiency than those of the Maillefer files.