Anchor-Free Toothbrush Bristle Alignment via Profiled Pin
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional toothbrushes lack a simple production method that balances effective cleaning and ease of use while maintaining a good cleaning effect and handling.
Innovation Solution
A toothbrush design featuring tufts of bristles with cylindrical and/or pointed bristles aligned using a profiled pin in a mold, creating a topography that complements the pin's surface, allowing for a bristle area configuration with multiple levels and varying bristle lengths, and a process for producing this configuration without anchors, using a carrier element with hard and soft components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If conventional toothbrushes use uniform bristle tufts, then the structure is simple to produce, but the cleaning effect and handling are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
A profiled pin is introduced as an intermediary tool during the molding process to align and shape the bristle tufts. The pin's profiled surface (with ramps, grooves, or asymmetric features) physically guides the bristles into desired configurations, creating multi-level or asymmetric bristle patterns without requiring complex post-processing or multiple molding steps.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the geometric parameters of the bristle tufts by using a profiled pin with specific surface features (ramps, grooves, asymmetric profiles). This transforms uniform bristle arrangements into varied configurations with different bristle heights and orientations, improving cleaning effectiveness while maintaining a single-step molding process.
2Reliability
If tufts of bristles with bristles of different lengths are used, then the cleaning effect is improved, but the production process becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The profiled pin is prepared in advance with specific surface features (ramps, grooves, asymmetric profiles) that will automatically create the desired bristle length variations during molding. The bristles are positioned and shaped in a single molding operation, eliminating the need for subsequent cutting, trimming, or sorting processes that would be required to create multi-length bristle tufts.
3Manufacturing precision
If profiled pins with discontinuous surfaces are used for bristle alignment, then the bristle topography is precisely controlled, but the mold complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of making the entire mold complex, only the localized contact surface of the profiled pin is given the discontinuous profile (ramps, grooves, asymmetric features). The rest of the mold structure remains simple and conventional. This localized complexity achieves precise bristle topography control without requiring a completely complex mold design.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention concerns a process for producing toothbrushes covered with bristles in an anchor-free manner, in which a tuft of bristles with cylindrical bristles and/or pointed bristles is introduced into a receiving recess of a mold of a bristle-providing machine and, by means of a profiled pin guided in the receiving recess, force is applied to the end facing the pin of the bristles of the tuft of bristles for the alignment thereof, so that the bristles of the tuft of bristles are aligned by means of an end face of the profiled pin and, as a result, form the topography that complements the topography of the end face of the profiled pin, wherein the profiled pin has on the end face that acts on the bristles a discontinuous surface, which forms multiple levels. This achieves a bristle area configuration that has multiple areas of use. A correspondingly produced toothbrush is also described.