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Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

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Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#11
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

I don't know much about lasers and the videos seemed convincing to me... Now I'm sad that it's a fake, even if I wanted to wait till the first version came out.

Light has a fun property of being bent when it passes through substances that have different optical densities. With some combinations of material and process we can exploit this property to achieve total internal reflection[0]. With a cylindrical glass rod we can fire light down it in such a way that it bounces off the walls and makes it to the far end without ever exiting through the sides. This is used in fiber optic communications to achieve low levels of loss transmitting light very large distances.

However, the total internal reflection can partly break down if we apply something to the side of the glass tube, like touching it with a finger. The laser will strike through the glass cylinder and onto whatever is touching it, this is known as frustrated total internal reflection. What's supposedly happening in this product is the razor blade has a fiber with a laser being shone through it, when the fiber comes into the contact with a hair the laser exits the fiber and the thermal energy burns the hair.

The problems here are pretty severe.

• If such a fiber did exist it would give you severe burns on contact with your skin (a very close shave indeed). It would be like trying to shave with a red hot block of steel held up to your face.

• Ever burnt some hair? It smells ghastly. I burned my beard once and the nauseating smell didn't go away for hours. Trying to convince consumers to go on a date while smelling like burning keratin would near impossible.

• The amount of laser power going through the fiber would have the potential to remove your eyesight if you broke it. If you wanted to use this you would need to be wearing eye protection (sealed goggles), skin protection like welding gear, have signage and locks on your bathroom to prevent anybody unprotected from entering.

• The amount of energy required for this sort of effect would be colossal, lasers are inefficient and need a lot of cooling (high power ones are often water cooled). If this existed just the hand piece would be something like a petrol pump nozzle leading to a massive cooling system and power supply.

• Any slight impurity in the fiber would cause it to instantly melt when the laser was turned on. Unless something is perfectly optically clear there is some loss to heat as light passes through it. Glass fibers made for telecommunications are incredibly clear, but they still have enough loss that repeaters are needed on long runs due to losses.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

> It's a testament to human stupidity that something this blatant managed to get $4M. That's a bit harsh. Most people don't understand technology on a functional level. Ask a "regular" person how programming, the internet or their mobile phone works and they won't be able to give you a technical explanation. In fact, most modern technology tries to hide the internal workings.. "it just works".

Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

The guy invented Intense Pulsed Light, i.e. the laser technology used in hair removal, so it sounded plausible he might have found a way to cut hair with a lower-intensity laser. Even if it cut it slowly, it might be better than razors for a lot of people.

Did you found source on that? Only source that I managed to find it's website of company he founded long time ago:

http://www.medicalbiocare.com/html/corporate.html

Any other sources tell that IPL was invented by someone else.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#14
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a testament to human stupidity that something this blatant managed to get $4M. That's a bit harsh. Most people don't understand technology on a functional level. Ask a "regular" person how programming, the internet or their mobile phone works and they won't be able to give you a technical explanation. In fact, most modern technology tries to hide the internal workings.. "it just works".

Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

Not everybody got into programming on the soft side. But I agree with you that on average most programmers would not know what that is.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

If it's a single beam, yes. But what I find incredible is that it didn't work worth a damn. They were struggling to cut one hair at a time. Definitely not the razor I want. I wonder how much scamming goes on with kickstarter, etc. I've been involved in a couple of projects (as payer, not seller) and am batting about 1/3.

Just curious what you mean by 1/3. Is that how many have failed or how many you think are actual scams? Of the several I've done (of which there have been a few failures) there's only one that I would consider a scam (and they actually refunded the money).

This one definitely sounds like a scam - especially how quickly they jumped to another platform without addressing the questions.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#16
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a testament to human stupidity that something this blatant managed to get $4M. That's a bit harsh. Most people don't understand technology on a functional level. Ask a "regular" person how programming, the internet or their mobile phone works and they won't be able to give you a technical explanation. In fact, most modern technology tries to hide the internal workings.. "it just works".

Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

Or ask and EE what a closure is.

But seriously, some programmers will actually know what a MOSFET is.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

The guy invented Intense Pulsed Light, i.e. the laser technology used in hair removal, so it sounded plausible he might have found a way to cut hair with a lower-intensity laser. Even if it cut it slowly, it might be better than razors for a lot of people.

> The guy invented Intense Pulsed Light, i.e. the laser technology used in hair removal

As somebody who has actually undergone laser hair removal, I can tell you that IPL is not laser. It's an alternative to laser that's used by some hair removal places, and it's generally considered less effective and less permanent than real laser. IPL is the budget option. It's also not technically a laser, either. IPL is non-coherent light over a range of wavelengths, while laser is coherent light over a single wavelength.

The most effective options for laser hair removal are alexandrite and maybe diode lasers for people with pale skin and YAG lasers for people with dark skin. You won't see IPL recommended over any of these.

Mind you, if what this project is selling is a temporary way to get rid of hair, IPL might be ideal for this particular use case.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#19
It's sad that people thought it was real, forget about lasers and stuff it's basic common sense.

A AAA battery doesn't store enough power to drive a laser capable of burning hair for any reasonable amount of time.

When the laser isn't interrupted by the hair it has to go some where which means that heat is produced, if it can get something hot enough to burn the hair off it would get hot enough that you won't be able to hold it yet alone put it to your face.

There's no way you would ever could get the laser beam close enough to the skin for a smooth shave without burning your skin off.

And most importantly burnt hair smells like shit....

P.S. I assume that most people know at least 1 person that did laser hair removal, they should know it's a very painful and long process and it works only on dark hairs so again using this to shave anything but a fairly dark beard would never work.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#20
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a testament to human stupidity that something this blatant managed to get $4M. That's a bit harsh. Most people don't understand technology on a functional level. Ask a "regular" person how programming, the internet or their mobile phone works and they won't be able to give you a technical explanation. In fact, most modern technology tries to hide the internal workings.. "it just works".

Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

Something that prevented my subwoofer amp from overheating in the 90s?
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