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Shaving can be the absolute worst, especially for people with sensitive skin. Razors can leave behind razor burn, ingrown hairs and cuts, and when you've worn down a razor so that it's no longer usable, it joins the others in landfills to the tune of 2 billion razors per year in the US (PDF).
The makers of a new product called the Skarp Laser Razor want to give you an incredibly close, irritation-free shave using lasers. The prototype is an aluminum razor-shaped gizmo that they say uses a laser to cut (not burn) the hair at skin level for a close shave, and works for all hair colors.
Because the laser is supposed to last about 50,000 hours and be usable without water, it would be good for the environment as well.
http://www.cnet.com/news/forget-blades-the-skarp-laser-razor-wants-you-to-shave-with-lasers/
[Kickstarter Campaign]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skarp/the-skarp-laser-razor-21st-century-shaving
(Score: 3, Informative) by engblom on Wednesday September 30 2015, @04:42AM
This razor has been discussed at several forums. There are several concerns:
- Not even once you see a working prototype. In their video they never shave with it.
- When they show the laser hitting the hair, it is not instantly cutting, so the shave is super slow
- If it would actually burn the hair, would it not smell terrible as hair on fire?
- If it would actually be strong enough for shaving, how can we be sure it does not do damage to skin like UV does? What frequency are they using? Is it a 100% safe frequency.
Many concluded that unless they see a working prototype, they would not support this kickstarter project.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday September 30 2015, @05:10AM
I wouldn't worry so much about 3 and 4. The idea that a laser of a certain intensity and wavelength will cut a susceptible chromophore seems both plausible and falsifiable.
1 and 2 are more troubling. From the video [kickstarter.com] it seems the laser shines from a very thin edge at the bottom, where a blade would normally be, in order to cut close to the base of the hair.
As for why it takes so many passes to cut 1 hair, they blame a fiber "made free hand in our lab using limited resources". I assume the fiber refers to a strip between the lasers and your skin. Obviously, the prototype is not impressive. If they couldn't get it to work, they could have shined an equivalent blue laser directly onto a hair or two to obliterate them for the camera closeup. Shine and blow it away with a puff of breath. But no, all they have is that weak demo. How do they even know they can build a fast and effective razor if they can't show it working once?
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(Score: 5, Informative) by RedBear on Wednesday September 30 2015, @06:30AM
I believe you might be misinterpreting how the device works. You're no doubt imagining, as I initially did, a bunch of laser beams projecting from the front edge of the razor, through the ends of a row of optical fibers or something. But that doesn't seem to be how it actually works.
In the demo video you linked to I can clearly see an extremely thin fiber suspended slightly away from the front edge of the razor, and the razor body itself seems to be just a solid piece of metal or plastic whose only purpose is to hold that single optical fiber. It's clearly this thin optical fiber that is doing the actual cutting, as the laser light wavelength is refracted out of the side of the optical fiber and enters the hair and is absorbed by the chromophores in the hair follicle. The laser is inside the optical fiber, not projecting in any way from the front edge of the razor. That's one reason they keep saying it's eye-safe. I believe they did the demo video under that funky green light so that it becomes more obvious what is happening to the hair. (Or maybe the light was normal or reddish but they just shifted the white balance of the video.) Without the light we'd no doubt see some light coming from within that optical fiber.
At about 1:25 in the main Kickstarter video you can see a guy in a lab rubbing a bare optical fiber sideways over his arm letting it melt through the hair on his arm. Now that I've seen the two videos together a few times it becomes fairly obvious what is happening. It's a really interesting concept and not at all what I was assuming when I read the initial submission. And I can understand how it doesn't make any "burnt hair" smell. Because it only melts through a tiny spot in the hair follicle, and it isn't burning the hair to a crisp like a flame or a more powerful laser might do. It's just heating the keratin up enough to separate the hair.
The laser razor itself is actually a bit of a finicky gimmick. I don't see any reason it won't work perfectly fine in its final form. But the real breakthrough here seems to be that they've found a laser wavelength that works on all types of hair. That's huge. It could mean that we may shortly have laser hair removal devices (you know, the big flash gun things) that both do less skin damage and work even on light-colored hair, and there is a rather large market of people who have been desperately seeking some kind of effective hair removal options their whole lives. Or, I could be wrong and this laser wavelength wouldn't work for that purpose.
Unfortunately the two demos so far have been done on people with dark hair. To verify that they've actually got something that will work with light hair, they should have demoed on someone with very light hair. I'm not sure I'm willing to dump $200 on a razor until I see that kind of evidence.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ