Epilating appliance

Details Epilating appliance Epilating appliance

1994-11-17

1997-12-30

Dawson, Glenn K.

Surgery

Instruments

Means for removal of skin or material therefrom

606131, A45D 2600

Patent

active

057024030

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to an epilating appliance for the removal of human body hairs which is adapted to be held in a user's hand and guided over the sections of the skin to be treated. The appliance includes a cylinder rotary about a center axis, the cylinder periphery being formed by at least one group of relatively fixed blades and at least one group of relatively movable gripping elements. The blades and the gripping elements of a respective group are arranged adjacent to each other at least in pairs, and the groups are in successive arrangement when viewed in a direction of rotation of the cylinder. The gripping elements are adapted to approach each other and recede from each other at least in pairs, closing and, respectively, opening a gripping aperture in the process.
Epilating appliances of this or a similar type are already known from the art as, for example, from the publications U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,902 A, U.S. Pat. No. 4,960,422 A or U.S. Pat. No. 5,084,055 A, which are included in the disclosure content of the present application by express reference thereto. Two types of hair removal must be distinguished, namely, the removal of hairs on the skin surface (depilation), and the removal of hairs by the roots (epilation). Motor-powered epilating appliances operate on the principle of gripping and clamping the hairs to be removed and extracting them from the skin by the roots by means of pincerlike gripping elements opening and closing at periodic intervals. Extraction is accomplished by the pincerlike gripping elements being moved away from the skin rapidly after gripping the hair or hairs. This movement of the gripping elements away from the skin may be accomplished, for example, in that the gripping elements are part of a rotary cylinder, performing periodic approaching and receding motions as the cylinder rotates.
It is a general problem in the appliances of the type initially referred to increase the efficiency while mitigating the sensation of pain experienced by the user during hair removal.
The efficiency of epilation may be improved in particular by an approach which ensures that the hairs of those sections of the skin over which the epilating appliance travels are reliably directed into the gripping apertures between the gripping elements. Not all hairs stand up straight or extend from the skin surface at right angles, rather, some of them also grow from the skin at an inclined angle or rest flat against the skin surface. To ensure that the hairs are caught by the gripping elements reliably also under such adverse circumstances, means referred to as hair-threading aids for lifting and engaging the hairs into the gripping apertures may be provided. Threading aids of this type are capable of diminishing the number of futile plucking operations, that is, closing of the empty gripping aperture, while the efficiency of the epilating appliance is increased. Such an approach aimed at improving the efficiency of the plucking system also mitigates the--highly subjective--sensation of pain experienced by its user. The physiological background of this finding is still open to explanation, but it is fairly safe to assume that the pain the user feels when, for example, ten hairs are plucked out at a time is not ten times the pain felt when a single hair is plucked out, because the pain-sensitive receptors distributed on the skin surface do not record all the simultaneous plucking operations on closely adjacent hairs as separate events. Irrespective of how exactly the theory to explain these relationships may be, examinations have shown that a user's subjective sensation of pain is the less the more effectively the epilating appliance operates. An added aspect is that the situation may also occur that hairs to be removed, whilst entering the gripping aperture between the gripping elements, are caught only in part, are pulled at a little, but not removed. Also, pulling at the hairs without removing them increases the user's sensation of pain. For this reason, an enhancement of the efficiency of the pluc

REFERENCES:
patent: 4575902 (1986-03-01), Alazet
patent: 4960422 (1990-10-01), Demeester
patent: 5084055 (1992-01-01), Demeester
patent: 5190559 (1993-03-01), Gabion et al.
patent: 5261919 (1993-11-01), Niedertscheider
patent: 5507753 (1996-04-01), Iwasaki et al.

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