Author Topic: Shaving with laser?  (Read 108573 times)

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Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #50 on: September 23, 2015, 11:20:12 am »
You won't see that in the united states.
The FDA won't approve a laser device that has no safety feature to allow only skin contact before activation to be sold in the US.
There is device you can get in the US that uses the proper wavelength of light that it will work on dark hair.
It was marketed for women and purports to have reasonably good success.
Google Silk Epil.

You are absolutely right. From what I understand, those type of devices targets melanin which is mainly found in "dark" hair; however, the real challenge is targetting blonde/white hair which has very little melanin. The only other thing I can think of is keratin, but that means you are going into IR region and that should probably generate more heat than acceptable levels.
 

Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #51 on: September 23, 2015, 11:23:14 am »
Is there any paper with your research on the subject and real data of the prototypes?

Will white hair absorb you l.a.s.e.r.?

Alexander.

All great questions; I was looking for some papers too yesterday since they so boldly claim that peer reviewed literatre has found such a device "safe" meaning that probabaly FDA will apporve it without much fuss; but I havnt been able to find anything except their patent I attached earlier in this thread.

About white hair, I am not to sure. I am sure the creators will swoop in here and announce that their laser can cut anything and everything  >:D
 

Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #52 on: September 23, 2015, 11:28:37 am »
Lets give them the advantage of doubt.
The beta tests would reveal soon enough if it is a workable device or not.


True, and to be honest, I am keeping an open mind.

about beta testing, if you mean just some video they'll shoot and heavily edit then no, but if its a real beta testing with their products being distributed and tested by consumers than I am sure we all agree that yeah thats the true test.

I am more concerned about this product never quite reaching that stage. The claims are so broad and "path breaking" for something which has been a well studied topic (lasers and hair composition) that I find it hard to believe that they have made a product without the disadvantages/limitations raised by steve and me here. They already walked back on the battery life issue from their initial claim of 10 years to the most recent quoted value of 1 month.
 

Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #53 on: September 23, 2015, 11:32:54 am »
Hi everyone,
We are men of science at Skarp so we think skepticism is very healthy.
Just want to address a couple gf things.
The Skarp Razor uses a low power laser, & gets its hair cutting ability not from the strength of the laser, but from targeting the particular molecules in the hair that break when hit with a certain wavelength of light. This means the laser is eye safe & capable of running on a AAA battery.
We've had a number of comments regarding the battery, & will decided to change to a user replaceable battery such is the overwhelming demand for it.
Feel free to head over to Kickstarter & post any other questions, i'll be checking back here too.

we can get to the exact mode of action later since I dont want to quibble about symantics of "breaking" vs cutting/burning hair; but can you just provide detailed specs of the laser inscluing its output, power consumption, heat generated etc.

your patent claims list bunch of different wavelengths; I am not quite sure which one made it in the final design.

" The device of claim 1, wherein the wavelength is within one or more ranges selected from a group consisting of: 380 nm to 480 nm, 380 nm to 500 nm, 400 nm to 500 nm, 2500 nm to 3500 nm, 2950 nm to 3050 nm, and 2700 nm to 3500 nm."

We're not looking to give away our IP :)

 :-DD :-DD isnt that the perfect excuse whenever it comes to providing any specs for products with tall claims.

If I was in your position, I would be just as skeptical. I would like to remind you all that our CEO is Morgan Gustavsson, who invented & patented IPL in the 80's. His most recent project is TRASER http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035899.
Obviously we can't talk about real specifics at this point, but if everyone's interested, we could organize a Q&A with Morgan?

Thanks for taking the time out for replying. Yes it will be helpful if anyone from your technical/scientific staff explain away the concerns raised by us on this thread without any handwaving on the "IP" part.

Since you mention your CEO has already been publishing, I am sure there would be some papers/patents which is already in public domain; so you might as well go ahead and provide those citations.

 

Offline AndreasF

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #54 on: September 23, 2015, 11:58:55 am »
...
Since you mention your CEO has already been publishing, I am sure there would be some papers/patents which is already in public domain; so you might as well go ahead and provide those citations.

I think the link he provided got messed up (period at end was included in link - correct link here)

I think it is an interesting concept, and it seems (to me at least) far more legit than the 800% monkey probe business. However, it does also seem a bit more "experimental" than they make it out to be. If it comes out as an actual product at some point, I'd certainly be interested, but I'm not willing to spend the amount of money they are asking for at this stage.

my random ramblings mind-dump.net
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #55 on: September 23, 2015, 02:56:06 pm »
You won't see that in the united states.
The FDA won't approve a laser device that has no safety feature to allow only skin contact before activation to be sold in the US.
There is device you can get in the US that uses the proper wavelength of light that it will work on dark hair.
It was marketed for women and purports to have reasonably good success.
Google Silk Epil.

A quick look at all the many "silk epil" devices doesn't show any such thing. Some do have a light so you ca see the hairs.

Can you provide a specific pointer or specific device, please.

Sorry got the wrong name, Let me call her today and I will get the name of the actual device.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline LaserSteve

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #56 on: September 23, 2015, 03:01:07 pm »
There is a segment in the video where a fiber is glowing like crazy with near IR, as it cuts hairs on a guys arm. This shows as whitish violet on color cameras as it gets past two dichroic filters in most cameras, one red, one blue, but usually not the green in the CCD mosaic.  It is cutting hair on the guy's arm.   From past experience, lasers in the 700 nm region usually hit the red pixels in color camera, and lasers in the 808 region hit residual responses  on both red and blue. That strongly hints that the test laser is around 800 nm. 

This is a bit of voodoo on my part, as no two models of color cameras have the same filter Reponses, and most have a IR cutoff filter in front of the CCDs.   Better cameras cut IR entirely.  Standard Silicon CCD response falls sharply to zero at 1100 nanometers, and CMOS cuts off even earlier.   I have no idea what camera they used. We use off the shelf silicon CCD cameras  to  examine and aim  near IR laser light in labs. While the response is hardly optimized for near IR, it is a low cost way of doing things.   For that reason I have a good idea how various cameras react to wavelengths they are not designed for.

So there is either near  IR 752 nm  pump light in the fiber if the fiber itself is  doped with rare earth and is lasing, or the test laser in the video was in the 750-850-900  nm range.  Rare Earth  Fiber lasers line up with some of the near to mid IR wavelengths mentioned in the patent, but cost and complexity of the needed optics plus the need for another laser diode to pump the fiber gain medium, suggests this is unlikely.  It would have an advantage with the evanescent coupling as you just put a mirror at the end of the fiber laser and allow resonance to build up inside the optical cavity thus formed. But that is so darn "out there" as to be highly unlikely. 
I've never seen short fibers lasing either, usually the length is in the 10s of meters to a kilometer. 

There are very few affordable diodes at wavelengths greater then 1100 nm, and few high power diodes at 1300-1500 where there is a market for diodes for long range fiber communications.  There  is nothing inexpensive at wavelengths greater then 1500 nm.

As I doubt you can get a Erbium fiber laser to useful powers at low cost in such a small space, and based on the video, I'm betting on a IR diode laser at less then 900 nanometers... But longer then 750 nanometers...

Ockham's razor, plus an educated guess, suggests the video shows a near IR diode laser directly coupled to a fiber...

Steve
 
« Last Edit: September 23, 2015, 03:13:18 pm by LaserSteve »
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Offline AF6LJ

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Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline LaserSteve

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #58 on: September 23, 2015, 03:09:12 pm »
I'm curious to see if the SensEpil really has a  FDA 401 medical  approval or an FDA  accession number...
There is so much stuff out there that does not, these days. I don't have time to check right now.

Steve
"What the devil kind of Engineer are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse?"
 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #59 on: September 23, 2015, 03:17:13 pm »
Lets give them the advantage of doubt.
The beta tests would reveal soon enough if it is a workable device or not.


True, and to be honest, I am keeping an open mind.

about beta testing, if you mean just some video they'll shoot and heavily edit then no, but if its a real beta testing with their products being distributed and tested by consumers than I am sure we all agree that yeah thats the true test.

I am more concerned about this product never quite reaching that stage. The claims are so broad and "path breaking" for something which has been a well studied topic (lasers and hair composition) that I find it hard to believe that they have made a product without the disadvantages/limitations raised by steve and me here. They already walked back on the battery life issue from their initial claim of 10 years to the most recent quoted value of 1 month.

We didn't walk back on that claim. We initially were offering a non replaceable rechargeable battery, that in our calculations would last around ten years. charging once a month with normal use. But the overwhelming response was that people wanted a user replaceable battery, so we reversed course on that. A single AAA will give around a month of normal use.
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #60 on: September 23, 2015, 03:23:11 pm »
I'm curious to see if the SensEpil really has a  FDA 401 medical  approval or an FDA  accession number...
There is so much stuff out there that does not, these days. I don't have time to check right now.

Steve

Good question...
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #61 on: September 23, 2015, 03:25:16 pm »
Hi everyone,
We are men of science at Skarp so we think skepticism is very healthy.
Just want to address a couple gf things.
The Skarp Razor uses a low power laser, & gets its hair cutting ability not from the strength of the laser, but from targeting the particular molecules in the hair that break when hit with a certain wavelength of light. This means the laser is eye safe & capable of running on a AAA battery.
We've had a number of comments regarding the battery, & will decided to change to a user replaceable battery such is the overwhelming demand for it.
Feel free to head over to Kickstarter & post any other questions, i'll be checking back here too.

we can get to the exact mode of action later since I dont want to quibble about symantics of "breaking" vs cutting/burning hair; but can you just provide detailed specs of the laser inscluing its output, power consumption, heat generated etc.

your patent claims list bunch of different wavelengths; I am not quite sure which one made it in the final design.

" The device of claim 1, wherein the wavelength is within one or more ranges selected from a group consisting of: 380 nm to 480 nm, 380 nm to 500 nm, 400 nm to 500 nm, 2500 nm to 3500 nm, 2950 nm to 3050 nm, and 2700 nm to 3500 nm."

We're not looking to give away our IP :)

 :-DD :-DD isnt that the perfect excuse whenever it comes to providing any specs for products with tall claims.

If I was in your position, I would be just as skeptical. I would like to remind you all that our CEO is Morgan Gustavsson, who invented & patented IPL in the 80's. His most recent project is TRASER http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035899.
Obviously we can't talk about real specifics at this point, but if everyone's interested, we could organize a Q&A with Morgan?

Thanks for taking the time out for replying. Yes it will be helpful if anyone from your technical/scientific staff explain away the concerns raised by us on this thread without any handwaving on the "IP" part.

Since you mention your CEO has already been publishing, I am sure there would be some papers/patents which is already in public domain; so you might as well go ahead and provide those citations.

We aren't going to give away our IP, but i'm sure Morgan & Paul would be happy to answer questions. Just post them on here & i'll do my best to get an answer to them all.
We're at the UCI dermatology lab today filming so I might not respond until tonight.
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #62 on: September 23, 2015, 03:31:23 pm »
I have a question;

How do you keep people from going blind by misusing your product?
After all in the US you have to preserve and protect the shallow end of the Gene pool.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline firewalker

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #63 on: September 23, 2015, 03:35:42 pm »
Is there any data from a real device to share?

Your project will fail but, I can't share the reason without IP infringement.

Alexander.
Become a realist, stay a dreamer.

 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #64 on: September 23, 2015, 03:39:17 pm »
I have a question;

How do you keep people from going blind by misusing your product?
After all in the US you have to preserve and protect the shallow end of the Gene pool.

The laser is eye safe
 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #65 on: September 23, 2015, 03:40:57 pm »
Is there any data from a real device to share?

Your project will fail but, I can't share the reason without IP infringement.

Alexander.

We'd love to turn you around & get your support! If you have specific technical questions, let me know & i'll put them to Morgan.
 

Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #66 on: September 23, 2015, 03:52:30 pm »
There is a segment in the video where a fiber is glowing like crazy with near IR, as it cuts hairs on a guys arm. This shows as whitish violet on color cameras as it gets past two dichroic filters in most cameras, one red, one blue, but usually not the green in the CCD mosaic.  It is cutting hair on the guy's arm.   From past experience, lasers in the 700 nm region usually hit the red pixels in color camera, and lasers in the 808 region hit residual responses  on both red and blue. That strongly hints that the test laser is around 800 nm. 

This is a bit of voodoo on my part, as no two models of color cameras have the same filter Reponses, and most have a IR cutoff filter in front of the CCDs.   Better cameras cut IR entirely.  Standard Silicon CCD response falls sharply to zero at 1100 nanometers, and CMOS cuts off even earlier.   I have no idea what camera they used. We use off the shelf silicon CCD cameras  to  examine and aim  near IR laser light in labs. While the response is hardly optimized for near IR, it is a low cost way of doing things.   For that reason I have a good idea how various cameras react to wavelengths they are not designed for.

So there is either near  IR 752 nm  pump light in the fiber if the fiber itself is  doped with rare earth and is lasing, or the test laser in the video was in the 750-850-900  nm range.  Rare Earth  Fiber lasers line up with some of the near to mid IR wavelengths mentioned in the patent, but cost and complexity of the needed optics plus the need for another laser diode to pump the fiber gain medium, suggests this is unlikely.  It would have an advantage with the evanescent coupling as you just put a mirror at the end of the fiber laser and allow resonance to build up inside the optical cavity thus formed. But that is so darn "out there" as to be highly unlikely. 
I've never seen short fibers lasing either, usually the length is in the 10s of meters to a kilometer. 

There are very few affordable diodes at wavelengths greater then 1100 nm, and few high power diodes at 1300-1500 where there is a market for diodes for long range fiber communications.  There  is nothing inexpensive at wavelengths greater then 1500 nm.

As I doubt you can get a Erbium fiber laser to useful powers at low cost in such a small space, and based on the video, I'm betting on a IR diode laser at less then 900 nanometers... But longer then 750 nanometers...

Ockham's razor, plus an educated guess, suggests the video shows a near IR diode laser directly coupled to a fiber...

Steve

Great detective work Steve  :-+

I dont know enough about CCD cameras/filters so I'll go with your knowledge on the issue.

I have come to a similar conclusion based on a separate analysis. The only chemicals in hair they could be targeting are melanin and keratin. Now, if you want to treat just the dark hair, then target melanin, go to a UV wavelength (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/melanin.html), and boom; the hair comes off.

However, I am assuming we want to even cut grey/blond hair  ;D and for that the only logical place is keratin. Unfortunately this now means we are in IR ranges.  I found an old paper http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0022-2836(68)90405-1 which describes the IR spectra for keratin; and as you can see from it; keratin absorbs at NIR to IR ranges. (I couldnt attach the paper here since it exceeds 1 mb size limit for attachments)

So the only conceivable way this works on all types of hair is by using NIR lasers.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2015, 03:58:35 pm by bigdawg »
 

Offline bigdawg

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #67 on: September 23, 2015, 03:54:56 pm »
Is there any data from a real device to share?

Your project will fail but, I can't share the reason without IP infringement.

Alexander.

 :-DD :-DD :-DD

 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #68 on: September 23, 2015, 05:27:21 pm »
There is a segment in the video where a fiber is glowing like crazy with near IR, as it cuts hairs on a guys arm. This shows as whitish violet on color cameras as it gets past two dichroic filters in most cameras, one red, one blue, but usually not the green in the CCD mosaic.  It is cutting hair on the guy's arm.   From past experience, lasers in the 700 nm region usually hit the red pixels in color camera, and lasers in the 808 region hit residual responses  on both red and blue. That strongly hints that the test laser is around 800 nm. 

This is a bit of voodoo on my part, as no two models of color cameras have the same filter Reponses, and most have a IR cutoff filter in front of the CCDs.   Better cameras cut IR entirely.  Standard Silicon CCD response falls sharply to zero at 1100 nanometers, and CMOS cuts off even earlier.   I have no idea what camera they used. We use off the shelf silicon CCD cameras  to  examine and aim  near IR laser light in labs. While the response is hardly optimized for near IR, it is a low cost way of doing things.   For that reason I have a good idea how various cameras react to wavelengths they are not designed for.

So there is either near  IR 752 nm  pump light in the fiber if the fiber itself is  doped with rare earth and is lasing, or the test laser in the video was in the 750-850-900  nm range.  Rare Earth  Fiber lasers line up with some of the near to mid IR wavelengths mentioned in the patent, but cost and complexity of the needed optics plus the need for another laser diode to pump the fiber gain medium, suggests this is unlikely.  It would have an advantage with the evanescent coupling as you just put a mirror at the end of the fiber laser and allow resonance to build up inside the optical cavity thus formed. But that is so darn "out there" as to be highly unlikely. 
I've never seen short fibers lasing either, usually the length is in the 10s of meters to a kilometer. 

There are very few affordable diodes at wavelengths greater then 1100 nm, and few high power diodes at 1300-1500 where there is a market for diodes for long range fiber communications.  There  is nothing inexpensive at wavelengths greater then 1500 nm.

As I doubt you can get a Erbium fiber laser to useful powers at low cost in such a small space, and based on the video, I'm betting on a IR diode laser at less then 900 nanometers... But longer then 750 nanometers...

Ockham's razor, plus an educated guess, suggests the video shows a near IR diode laser directly coupled to a fiber...

Steve

I read Morgan this post, his response:
"He's obviously a very bright guy! Tell him to keep guessing, if he had more disclosure, he would do better. I would like to personally speak to him after deliveries start."
 

Offline TheAmmoniacal

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #69 on: September 23, 2015, 06:11:28 pm »
If I try to do some rough math in my head on this - assuming they use a 800 nm diode.

It uses a AAA battery that lasts for 30 days with normal use, I'll assume normal use ~ 1 minute per day (or 2 minutes every 2 days). So 30 minutes runtime. A AAA cell is about 800 mAh at a nominal 1.2V ~ 1 Wh, 1Wh/0.5h = 2 W. 2 W laser?  :-//

Would that mean a spectral irradiance of 2/(0.0002*850*10^-9) = 11764705882 W/(m^2.nm)? (If we assume a 2 cm^2 shaving area).

 Someone correct me on this please :wtf:
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #70 on: September 23, 2015, 06:16:40 pm »
Without more information I have to call BS on this....
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline SkarpRazor

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #71 on: September 23, 2015, 06:17:59 pm »
If I try to do some rough math in my head on this - assuming they use a 800 nm diode.

It uses a AAA battery that lasts for 30 days with normal use, I'll assume normal use ~ 1 minute per day (or 2 minutes every 2 days). So 30 minutes runtime. A AAA cell is about 800 mAh at a nominal 1.2V ~ 1 Wh, 1Wh/0.5h = 2 W. 2 W laser?  :-//

Would that mean a spectral irradiance of 2/(0.0002*850*10^-9) = 11764705882 W/(m^2.nm)? (If we assume a 2 cm^2 shaving area).

 Someone correct me on this please :wtf:

From Morgan:
"Never assume!"
 

Offline LaserSteve

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #72 on: September 23, 2015, 07:23:58 pm »
The more I crunch the numbers, I too come up with technological long shot, but never assume...

Rant about success in innovation  snipped via self edit...

Steve
« Last Edit: September 23, 2015, 09:27:11 pm by LaserSteve »
"What the devil kind of Engineer are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse?"
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #73 on: September 23, 2015, 07:29:39 pm »
I would like to see them succeed also, but my family and friends will tell you I am the model Skeptic.
I don't expect them to show all their hand, but there are some things about this product that bug me.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline Pinkus

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Re: Shaving with laser?
« Reply #74 on: September 24, 2015, 01:38:30 pm »
I would like to see them succeed also, ....
me too, and if it is just to grin at Gillette with their 10x over priced blades.
Well, if I think about it, if this reall works, P&G will probably buy these guys/patents and lock everthing forever in a big safe so we will never have the chance to use anyway.

 


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