WO2015162455A1 - Epilator and changeable epilator head - Google Patents

Abstract

The proposed device is related to epilators or devices for removing hair by plucking (epilation). The aim of the invention is to create an epilator intended for removing hairs from difficult-to-reach parts of a person's face, such as the nose, earlobes, etc. The hair removal device comprises a housing having mounted therein a drive, a rotatable working member, one end of which is coupled to the drive and the other end of which is secured inside the housing of the device, and guides for the working member. The working member is a helical spring of minimal diameter which is curved in the shape of an arc, wherein the arched portion of the spring is situated outside the housing and has a minimal size, thus making it possible to access the most difficult-to-reach places of the face. Likewise, the diameter of the wire from which the spring is made is minimal, thus making it possible to grasp even the shortest hairs. The guides for the spring which are additionally mounted inside the housing provide the working member with the necessary rigidity and prevent twisting of the spring. Also, the guides serve to direct the ends of the spring into a given location inside the housing. The technical result is the possibility of carrying out epilation primarily in difficult-to-reach parts of a person's face, including the removal of the very shortest vellus hairs, while minimizing painful sensations.

Description

 Epilator and replaceable nozzle for epilator

Technical field

 The proposed epilator relates to devices for hair removal or hair removal, which can be held in the hand, and which is designed to remove unwanted hair on the human body, mainly in the area of inaccessible areas of the human face.

State of the art

The prior art device for removing hair (patent SU 1228775), consisting of a housing, an electric drive, a working element, which is a spiral spring, bent in the form of an arc with the possibility of rotation. To ensure the required rigidity, a wire is located inside the working element. The disadvantage of this device is the presence of a wire inside the coil spring, which provides excessive resistance to rotation of the working element and does not allow minimizing the size of the device in order to use it to remove hair in hard-to-reach areas of the person’s face with the ability to remove the shortest gun hairs.

Also known devices (trimmers) for removing hair from inaccessible parts of the face (nose, ears), patents JP2007044082, JP2011200460, consisting of a body, an electric drive, a battery, a nozzle containing a cutting head, consisting of a fixed knife fixed to the head cover, and a movable knife inside a fixed knife. The nozzle is removable and fixed on the trimmer body. The disadvantages of these devices are, firstly, that the hair is removed by cutting, which is a less effective method compared to removing hair by pulling (hair removal) and, secondly, that a fixed knife having a certain thickness does not allow hair removal shorter than the thickness of this knife.

Closest to the proposed technical solution is the device described in patent CN 1606940, comprising a housing, an electric drive, an element power, the working element, which is a spiral spring, bent in the form of an arc. Hair removal is carried out by capturing the hair with a spiral spring rotating around an axis.

The disadvantage of this device is that it cannot be used to remove hair from the inaccessible and embossed surface of a person's face (nose, auricles, etc.). The diameter of the spring is 3-8 mm and does not allow to obtain the size of the working element necessary to ensure its access to such places, this requires miniaturization of the device. Also, with the minimum diameter of the spring and the length necessary for its functioning, when there are loads on the spring at the time of hair removal, it is possible to twist the spring and block the operation of this device.

Utility Model Disclosure

The technical problem for which this device is proposed is to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks and develop a convenient and reliable epilator designed to remove unwanted hair from hard-to-reach parts of a person’s face (nose, auricle, upper lip, eyebrow line) by pulling out ( epilation), while ensuring the capture of even the shortest gun hair and minimizing pain during epilation.

The problem is solved using a hair removal device, or an epilator, which incorporates a body, an electric drive, a battery, a working element of a minimum size, made in the form of a thin spiral spring, bent in the form of an arc with a minimum radius, while the arcuate section of the spring located outside the housing, and additionally provided with guides located inside the housing.

The result is access to the working element of the epilator in the most inaccessible places of the person’s face, for example, such as the auricle or the opening of the nose and the possibility of hair removal (pulling), including the shortest cannon hair. The technical result that this technical solution is aimed at is the creation of an epilator to remove unwanted hair from hard-to-reach parts of a person’s face (nose, auricle, upper lip, eyebrow line) by pulling (epilation), which ensures removal of even the shortest gun hair.

A distinctive feature of the proposed device for removing hair from the above known, closest to it, is the presence of guides fixed inside the case through which the working element (coil spring) passes. The guides increase the stability of the device, ensure the rigidity of the working element and prevent twisting of the spring in case of increased stress on the spring when pulling hair with a minimum spring diameter and the length of the spring necessary for the device to function. Also, guides are necessary to output one of the ends of the spring to a predetermined place where the spring is connected to the drive shaft without undesirable kinks of the working element, which is a necessary condition for the minimum diameter of the epilator case.

This device for hair removal has two options, it can be a one-piece, non-separable structure (Fig. 1). and modular design (Fig. 4).

Brief Description of the Drawings

The proposed hair removal device is illustrated by the drawings shown in Fig. 1-5.

 Fig. 1 - a general view of the epilator in a vertical section (one-piece construction);

 Fig. 2 - fragment of the working element (spring) with asymmetric turns in an enlarged scale;

 Fig. 3 - a fragment of the working element with a miniature weighting agent in an enlarged scale;

 Fig. 4 - a general view of the epilator with a detachable nozzle (modular design) in a disassembled state;

 Fig. 5 is a fragment of a spring with guides in the form of a ring system on an enlarged scale;

s Utility Model Implementation

In the first embodiment (one-piece construction), the epilator (Fig. L) is a body 1 for holding in the hand, in the lower part of which there is an electric drive 6 with a battery element 7, a switch 8. In the upper part there is a working element 3, designed to remove hair by pulling (epilation), the guides 2, the mount 4. The working element 3 is a coil spring made of wire twisted by turns.

The guides 2 are made in the form of bushings of preferably circular cross section and can have a different configuration for the output of the ends of the working element to the fixing points with the mount 4 and the drive shaft 5. To reduce the contact area of the spring with the guides, the guides can also be implemented as a system of interconnected rings (Fig.5), forming a cavity of the desired size and configuration for placement of the working element in it. The upper part of the body, the guides 2 and the mount 4 are made primarily of plastic by injection molding and can be a single unit or separate parts

The operation of the device is as follows. When you turn on the device through the switch 8, the rotation from the electric drive 6 is transmitted to the working element 3, represented by a coil spring, twisted by turns, bent in the form of an arc.

 To remove unwanted hair, the arcuate part of the spring 3, located outside the upper part of the body, is carried out on the corresponding section of the skin.

 When the working element 3 rotates around its axis, the hair is captured by the coil of spring in the gap between adjacent coil of spring, formed on the outside of the spring at its bend, clamped by convergent turns on the inside of the bend of the spring and pulled out by a rotating spring.

The second version of the epilator is implemented as a modular collapsible design with the ability to separate the upper part and use it as a replaceable nozzle (Fig. 4). Nozzles of this type can also be used with the aforementioned hair removal devices by trimming (trimmers) produced in present, as an additional nozzle for an alternative method of hair removal.

The proposed device (Fig. 4) has a housing that consists of two parts: a lower part for holding in a hand containing a housing 9, an electric drive 8 with a battery 10, a switch 11, and an upper part (removable nozzle). The removable nozzle consists of a cover 1, a working element 3, a mounting unit 4 and guides 2 and is fixed on the mounting pad 12 of the lower part of the device. The working element 3, as in the first embodiment, is a coil spring made of wire twisted by turns, having the shape of an arc passing inside the guides 2. One end of the spring is fixed in the cover 1 of the nozzle in the attachment unit 4, preferably on the guides 2 by means of a bearing rolling or sliding (not shown in the drawing) or otherwise, providing rotation of the working element. The arcuate portion of the spring 3 is located outside the cap 1 of the nozzle. At the second end of the spring, also located inside the cover 1, a tip 5 is fixed, in the lower part of which there is an opening 6, into which the tip of the shaft 7 of the electric drive 8 is inserted to ensure the engagement and transmission of rotational motion. The guides 2 are fixed inside the cap 1 of the nozzle. The cap 1 of the nozzle, the guides 2 and the mount 4 are made primarily of plastic by injection molding and can be a single unit or separate parts.

The operation of the epilator is as follows. When fixing the nozzle on the mounting pad 12, the tip of the shaft 7 of the electric drive 8 is inserted into the hole 6 and engages with the tip 5 of the working element 3 of the replaceable nozzle. When the device is turned on, the rotation from the electric drive 8 is transmitted to the spring 3. Further, the device according to the second embodiment works similarly to that described above.

The length of the hair to be removed depends on the thickness of the wire from which the spring is made, so the diameter of the spring wire is minimal in order to capture even the shortest gun hairs and penetrate the most inaccessible areas of the face. For example, a work item made of wire with a diameter of 0.2 mm allows you to remove hair from a length of 0.15 mm, which allows you to use the device to remove unwanted hair from areas of the face such as eyebrow line or upper lip (mainly in women), where the presence of even very short hair can be noticeable.

The minimum diameter of the wire of which the spring is made, as well as the minimum diameter of the spring of which the working element is made, allows the spring to be bent with a much smaller radius, which makes it possible to minimize the size of the working (arcuate) section of the spring. This allows you to use the epilator also for the correction of the eyebrow line, which known devices for hair removal do not allow.

The wire for the manufacture of the spring is made of steel or another material that provides the necessary mechanical characteristics.

For more effective hair removal, the working element (spring) 3 may have a special coating, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Compared to steel, the material is softer and more flexible, the PVC coating provides a tighter fit of the coil of the spring at the points of contact with each other, and also increases the contact area, which ensures the capture of more removed hair. A higher sliding friction coefficient than steel improves hair grip and reduces hair slippage between the turns of the spring at the time of pulling out.

To achieve an analgesic effect, one or more turns on the arcuate portion of the coil spring can have an asymmetric shape (Fig.2), which gives the spring oscillatory movements during rotation. As a result, upon contact with the skin, stimulation of the nerve endings of the skin occurs, which reduces pain during epilation. Also to give the spring oscillatory

During rotation around its own axis, a miniature weighting compound can be fixed on one of the turns of the arcuate section (Fig. 3).

Thus, the technical result when using this device is expressed in the ability to remove hair from such inaccessible parts of the face as the nose, auricle, including the shortest fluffy hair, while minimizing pain.

Claims

USEFUL MODEL FORMULA 1. An epilator containing a housing in which the actuator is installed, a working element, which is a spiral spring bent in the form of an arc, with the possibility of rotation around its own axis, while the arcuate section of the spring is located outside the housing, one end of the spring is connected to the actuator, the other the end of the spring is fixed inside the housing, characterized in that it contains guides for the spring, made in the form of bushings fixed inside the upper part of the housing.  2. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that the guides are made in the form of a system of interconnected rings.  3. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that the guides have a different configuration.  4. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that the attachment point of one of the ends of the spring is located directly on the guides.  5. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that one or more turns of the spring have an asymmetric shape.  6. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that a miniature weighting agent is fixed on one or more turns of the spring.  7.. The epilator according to claim 1., characterized in that the working element has a polymer coating.  8. The nozzle for the epilator, made with the possibility of detachable connection with the lower part of the device so that an epilator is formed, in the lower part of which a drive with a battery is installed, characterized in that it contains a working element, which is a coil spring bent in the form of an arc , with the possibility of rotation around its own axis, the arcuate section of the spring is located outside the nozzle, guides for the spring, made in the form of bushings are fixed inside the nozzle, one end of the spring is fixed on the direction boiling, when fixing the nozzle and the lower part of the device in the hole of the second end of the spring tip is inserted into the tip of the drive shaft.