Patent Application
20220266464
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The invention relates to a handheld razor equipped with razor cutting blades and suitable for shaving with cream to remove facial hair or other body hair.
Razor blades inherently clog. The function of cutting hair and moving the hair, skin, and saving cream from one side of the razor to the other creates clogging in the blades. This clogging results in hair being cut multiple times and additional force needed to cut similar amounts of hair. It doesn't matter how many blades are on the razor, clogging will happen. Once the razor is done being used any residual hair, skin, and cream will dry on the blades and will hold moisture on the blades and accelerate dulling.
One of the biggest downsides of using cartridge razors is that the replacement cartridges are expensive. One can end up spending hundreds of dollars a year on replacement cartridges. Typically, companies that supply cartridge razors don't provide any instruction on their packaging on how to store and care for the razor to maximize its longevity, perhaps because doing so would severely cut into their profits.
Nevertheless, the following techniques for preserving the useful life of cartridge razors are set forth online in an article by Benjamin Rose on Feb. 23, 2021 titled “Mach 3 vs. Fusion (Battle of the Best Cartridge Razor!)” at primandprep.com/mach-3-vs-fusion/:
While undertaking such techniques may well extend the useful life of the cartridge razor, more should be done in its design to render the cartridge razor self-cleaning. It is desired to design a self-cleaning razor that eliminates clogging of its razor blades and avoids acceleration of dulling from moisture attributed to residual hair, skin and cream.
The present inventor has found that by adding two linked rollers in front of the first two cutting blades of a manual razor, the rollers move the hair, skin, and cream away from the blades effortlessly during the shaving process. Once done, the rollers may be manually engaged to further clear any final debris out away from the blades to prolong the life of the razor.
For a better understanding of the present invention, reference is made to the following description and accompanying drawings, while the scope of the invention is set forth in the appended claims.
Turning to the drawings of
This lead roller 10 in front of the lead cutting blade 20 performs the function of moving the initial debris to the back of the razor and clearing a path for more material. (hair, skin, shaving cream).
The lead cutting blade 20 performs the function of doing the rough cut, that is, cutting the bulk of the hair as the lead cutter.
The trailing roller 12 is at the same height as the lead roller 10. It has the same paddles to grip and move hair, skin, and cream away. It is directly in front of the trailing middle cutting blade 22.
This trailing roller 12 performs the function of clearing the debris from in front of the trailing middle blade 22 and continuing the cutting and clearing process.
The trailing middle cutting blade 22 is continuing to cut the hair. Now the hair is cut to about skin level.
The final cutting blade 24 is the final cutter. The two blades (lead blade 20 and trailing middle blade 22) that perform their cutting functions before that of the final cutting blade 24 have done the majority of the work. The lead roller 10 and trailing roller 12 have cleared the debris away; the final cutting blade 24 performs the finishing cut.
A moisturizing strip 40, which is applied to a detachable cover piece 50 in a conventional manner, conditions the skin more effectively since there is a cleaner surface. The detachable cover piece 50 has spaced apart openings 44 that align with openings 42 of an underlying frame bar 52. The openings 44 in the cover piece 50 are on where the moisturizing strip 40 connects in a conventional manner.
The cover piece 50 has a cover bar 53 with four spaced apart openings 44 and has two cover arms 54 that extend outward from opposite ends of the cover bar 53. The razor cartridge 2 has a frame bar 52 with four spaced apart openings 42 and has two frame arms 70 that extend outward from opposite ends of the frame bar 52. The two cover arms 54 each have a respective pair of inner and outer walls each with three semicircular notches 56 and the two frame arms 70 have a respective pair of inner and outer walls each with three semicircular notches 58. Upon placing the cover piece 50 onto the frame bar 52 and two frame arms 70, the three semicircular notches 56 in the inner and outer walls of the cover arms 70 align with the three semicircular notches 58 in the inner and outer walls of the two frame arms 70 to form four sets of three circular openings. The three circular openings for each set align with each other.
Three cylindrical rods 14, 16, 18 are fitted into respective ones of the four sets that form the three circular openings in alignment with each other. The three cylindrical rods 14, 16, 18 are rotatable within the circular openings. The cylindrical rods 14, 18 may be contiguous with the rollers 10, 12 respectively and contiguous with a pair of lead end gears 62 and a pair of trailing end gears 64 respectively. The cylindrical rod 16 may be contiguous with a pair of counter gears 60.
With reference to
The inner and outer walls of the cover arms 54, together with similar walls of the frame arms 70 on both sides of the razor cartridge 2, cooperate to form two shield compartments that each accommodate a set of the two gears 62, 64 and the counter gear 60 and they block the entry of cut hair, skin and cream from reaching the gears 60, 62, 64. Access openings 72 are provided in the underside of each of the pair of frames 70 (on opposite sides of the razor cartridge 2) to enable cleaning of the gears 60, 62, 64 that are positioned above the access openings 72. The frame bar 52 extends between and is connected to the lower half of the two shield compartments and the cover bar 53 extends between and is connected to the upper half of the two shield compartments.
The counter gear 60 has the same gear ratio as the other two gears 62, 64, which likewise have the same gear ratio with each other. This lead roller 10 is responsible for starting the clearing process. The purpose of the counter gear 60 is to rotate the trailing roller 12 in the same direction as the lead roller 10. As a consequence, the trailing second gear 64 directly drives the trailing roller 12, which rotates in the same direction as the lead roller 10, moving debris from the front of the blade to the back. The rotation of the lead roller 10 drives the leading first gear 62 to rotate.
Turning to
The wings 4 of
The spacing between the neighboring razor blades 20, 22 and the rollers 10, 12 approximates the same spacing that separates razor blades in a razor cartridge of conventional manual safety razors.
Water is used to clean the rollers 10, 12. The rollers 10, 12 allow the water discharged under a conventional sink faucet of a residence to rotate them and move material away from the blade. The self-cleaning aspect of the invention refers to self-cleaning the blade because of the roller rotation.
The razor blades 20, 22, 24 are of conventional manufacture, preferably metallic such as stainless steel with a sharpened edge at one end. The opposite end of the blade is preferably blunt and thus not sharpened.
While the foregoing description and drawings represent the preferred embodiments of the present invention, various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.
