Influence of pre-existing surface defects on NiTi rotary instrument failure: A SEM study

I. Objectives The purpose of this study is to determine if propagation of pre-existing manufacturing defects results in brittle fracture of NiTi rotary files by examining the fracture surface of the instrument by SEM, and to compare the fracture time of NiTi rotary files with different flute designs under cyclic loading. II. Materials and Methods This study examined three groups of rotary NiTi instruments (K3, ProFile, Hero). Of each group, 04 taper, size 30 and 06 taper, size 25 were selected.：120 in total. Surface defects were created by simulating the machining process of NiTi rotaries.(omitted)