
interesting...
In theory, it could cut patterns in your beard....
That was my first thought - dot matrix beards.
P.
Men with beards have invented a razor which shaves with a laser. Californian startup Skarp is the brainchild of follicle boffin Morgan Gustavsson, who has worked on medical devices for hair removal. Skarp Technologies says its razor is powered by a small laser, which cuts through hair for a shave which is closer than using a …
All razor companies are making money of blade consumables in a HP/Lexmark Inkjet style.
As a result there is absolutely no interest in making a blade last longer. In fact the average "lifetime" of a blade has been slowly creeping downwards instead.
So your ceramic suggestion is an anathema.
I reckon that the reason that the bearded look (or at least stubble) is particularly common just now is only partly to do with fashion, and also has as much to do with a combination of inherent laziness, Movember ("Hey, that look suits me"), and, especially, "You're charging *how much* for a pack of refill razor blades now?!".
It's less hassle and less expensive just to use a beard trimmer every few days, than feed Big Razor's greed (no, we do not need nor care about 5 blades, plffft...).
"As a result there is absolutely no interest in making a blade last longer."
My facial hair has been commented on by barbers as being rather tough. A state-of-the-art wet razor blade gives one very clean shave. However the same blade will then give six months of adequate shaving.
What is annoying is that they alter the blade fitting mechanism on a fairly regular benefit. One advantage of that is the remaindered stock of the obsolescent blades gets sold off at a good discount.
" What ever happened to the ceramic razor blade ? "
Ceramic knives aren't always all that sharp -- they cut food well due to the cleanness of the edge, not absolute sharpness. One of the reasons they're so handy, is that the lack of sharpness means you get the "ouch" reaction from you finger before you're deep enough to draw blood.
Ceramic razors can be done, but it seems to be a pretty serious undertaking.
"Safe for any part of the body"I don't know about you, but my face is one of the more sensitive areas of me, with some of the thinnest skin (especially the neck/under the chin). If it's safe to use on a face, it should well be safe for legs, chest, or anywhere else.
Having said that, I agree with the above; lasers (unless guided by a well-trained medical professional) have no business being anywhere near my nether bits.
"Safe for any part of the body.."
If that's true then I really could have done with one of these a couple of months ago. Because - well - cough! - hmm - never mind.
Let's just say that "downstairs" razor burn is no laughing matter. Well, I wasn't laughing anyway...
Let's just say that "downstairs" razor burn is no laughing matter. Well, I wasn't laughing anyway...
Hmmm, you've seen the reviews of Veet For Men, I take it?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Veet-Men-Hair-Removal-Cream/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK
Brings tears to your eyes...
" Laser hair removal works by absorbing heat. Grey hair doesn't absorb as much heat as dark hair so it removes all the dark hair leaving the grey hair behind. (I'm dating an esthetician) "
That would be IPL. This is a new invention (from the guy who invented IPL, incidentally) and as stated in both the Kickstarter page and the article, he's found a single structure common to all human hair that reacts to a specific frequency of light. This means it gets the greys too.
There are no pictures of a working prototype
Have you tried watching the video? There are certainly prototypes and certainly footage of the laser system doing its stuff to hairs. That's both the tech and design covered, what more do you want?
Incidentally, the "cheap lasers are only the Blu-Ray ones" bit is highly amusing as, initially, BD players were bloody expensive due to the high cost of same. This actually goes a long way toward proving that the ones required by the razor will become cheap as chips overnight as soon as the device ships in quantity. Top tip: Don't buy one of the first, wait 'til they get down to 50 quid....
While I love the idea, I've seen far simpler and technically progressed kickstarters fall flat.
I'll wait until I see one actually working effectively on proper, wirewool-esque, senioer-developer levels of facial hare before I part with my cash.
Also, if it DOES work it'll be in consumers hands damn quickly... in some cases before the kickstarter backers get theirs.
It'll be okay, until someone tries to make a cheap one for 30 quid. And skimps on everything, and it A) doesn't work B) burns people or C) both. Queue TV programmes breathlessly talking about these "deathtraps" and the razor industry attempting to get the whole thing outlawed after someone plugged their 30 quid knockoff into the wrong charger and it scotched their bathroom carpet.
" That's if they patent it, "
A bunch of experienced professionals have spent years inventing a new revolutionary technology. There is no question of "if" (even before you see this stated on the Kickstarter page).
" or if whoever makes a cheap knockoff is based in part of the world that cares about such things. Given how many counterfeit goods already exist, I assume that we'll be able to buy cheap (and dangerous) laser shavers if this ever takes off. "
Even if the manufacturers don't care about patents, the importers have to. Any cheap knock-offs that are legal will be battery-guzzling high-powered lasers.
It's a laser. Burning is how lasers cut.
FTA:
After years of research and development, they discovered a chromophore in the hair which can be cut when hit with a particular light wavelength.
Molecules can be cleaved when hit by right wavelength and amount of energy. That's not the same as burning, which would require more energy in this case of this "razor".
"Molecules can be cleaved when hit by right wavelength and amount of energy."
They can also be cleaved by chemical means.
So get back to me when there's a safe gel that can be rubbed on my face to remove unwanted hair, and doesn't feel like I've set my face on fire the way current products do.
So it lasts 50,000 hours before I need to replace the unit? Lets be generous, and say a wet shave takes me 5 minutes, and that this method doesn't take longer than a wet shave (otherwise, what's the bloody point?), that gives me a lifetime for this laser-razor of 600,000 shaves, or one a day for the next 1,600 years.
Not the best business model I've heard of.
"Not the best business model I've heard of."
Or the vendor will adopt the Microsoft/Adobe business model and charge you a monthly fee to continue using the razor. Failure to pay the monthly fee will result in intermittent operation of the laser, leading to patterns forming adverts being cut into your stubble as you shave.
A sensor in the razor connected to the cloud will also detect what brands of soap, toothpaste and deodorant you use, as well as phoning home, tracking and profiling your shaving and morning ablution habits for the purpose of advertising to you the same soap, toothpaste and deodorant you already use.
"Not the best business model I've heard of."
Selling a product more convenient and longer lasting than existing ones actually sounds like a pretty good business model (assuming it actually works of course). Not everyone is desperate to gouge customers for every penny they have, some people are happy to make a reasonable amount of money by selling something people want. And of course, this would hardly be the fits product with a life expectancy longer than that of the average person. Things like furniture and houses can easily last decades or centuries, yet somehow there's always a market to sell new ones.
They might be like LED lamps which are supposed to last the same sort of time.
In lamps, they refer to the led, which may indeed last that long, but the cheap, deathtrap, underrated power supplies they throw in to drive the LED don't last that long. I bought 8 GU10 LED lamps and all bar one are dead after less than 12 months of normal use. Dreadful. They should have to state the lifetime of the whole thing, not just the longest lasting component.
At least the razor is battery operated and low voltage, so as long as the rest of the electronic driver circuitry is rated at 50,000 hours too, they may have a chance for that claim.
The only thing planar about a traditional cut throat razor is the edge, the bulk is a bi-concave prism. Traditionally a razor is a very sharp, thin blade or, more recently, an assembly of blades, but just as a camera doesn't have to be a room, or use photosensitive film, I think we can say that this is a razor. For that matter, a shaver doesn't necessarily remove hairs. I doubt that any of my spokeshaves would be good for hair removal, no matter how keenly I honed them.
"[...] doesn’t suffer from irritation, razor burn, cuts or ingrown hairs"
There are two market segments where this will be particularly welcomed. Women's hair removal - and naturist "smoothies". Both groups depilate most of the visible hair on their bodies and have to take care to use exfoliating lotions to prevent ingrowing hairs. In both cases using a razor on som eparts of teh body is particularly tricky.
Morgan Gustavsson appears with his full name early on, then as "Founder Morgan", which apart from the dreadful Timese seems awfully familiar, then loses a terminal 'n' further down.
I suppose that something like this would pay for itself pretty quickly, given the ridiculous price of razor cartridges; but so would electric razors, which have been around for a while.
Yeah, those 25 cartridges last about 12 shaves for me. I used a cartridge, then a second one on one occasion and then gave up on them. Left my face cut in places I have never cut myself before.
The missus is using them now for shaving her legs, though, and she doesn't complain.
I also tried the 3- or 4-blade job that Lidl sells, just slightly less dreadful, lasted about two shaves for me.
I'm using the 5-blade Gillette cartridges these days, and they're somewhat adequate, but as the price creeps up, their quality goes ever down -- I used to use them for months on end, right now I can't get more than three weeks from one.
The worst part is that, although I have very firm facial hair, I also have very sensitive skin, and if I shaved daily, I'd be glowing bright red all the time.
I tried an electric shaver before and found it also irritates my skin and doesn't really get all hair off.
I'm looking at this with great interest and I hope they bring it to market soon.
How terribly yesterday. I'm going full-fat nuclear. Kick-start my new Razonium(tm) plutonium powered razor! It'll nuke those hairs back into the stone age and give your skin a nice, healthy* glow. Forever**!
The first 50 kick-starters who give me $50,000 each will automatically be eligible for the model that shoots frikkin' sharks from the handle!
* For very small values of healthy
** Forever being whatever plutonium's half-life is
A potentially lethal weapon (just a little tweak on the flux power coupling, leave it in the bathroom where Mr Bond is going to shave and ... ha ha ha ha!)
What's the difference between this and the much advertised No!No! ... no, it's really a No!No! Joke? No! No!, apparently not!
I believe the No!No! works on the basis of sluffing off the surface of your skin off with an infra-red burny-beamy-oven-thing (stop me if I get too technical). According to several very smooth skinned but apparently ex-hairy American lasses, who swear they looked like Sasquatch before using said product, it works on southern-drawling-bird-moustaches where lathering was previously required daily and lesser known northern-european-granny-beards too. The inference is that is also copes with extra luxuriant Austrian-armpit and the Greater-Italian-mossy-bramble-thicket neither of which need soaping up in any way.
So is this razor an evolutionary laser light bulb or another reinvention of the trim-wheel?