Toothbrush Handle Hollow-Space Structure for Material Reduction
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional oral hygiene devices, such as toothbrushes, face challenges in achieving optimal material efficiency, ergonomics, and ecological sustainability, with issues related to material usage, energy consumption, and waste reduction.
Innovation Solution
The design incorporates a handle unit with a hollow-space structure, primarily made from sustainable materials, minimizing material volume while maintaining ergonomics and grippability, using bio-degradable and recyclable plastics, and optimizing the structure with bionic designs to reduce weight and enhance stability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the handle unit is made with conventional solid material structure, then structural strength and stability are ensured, but material volume and weight increase, leading to higher resource consumption and waste
Solution Approach 1:
The handle unit incorporates a foam material that provides a cellular, porous internal structure. This foam material delivers structural strength and stability while significantly reducing the overall material volume and weight compared to solid material constructions, thereby resolving the contradiction between structural reliability and material quantity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using solid material and removing parts to reduce weight (subtraction approach), the invention inverts the approach by using a lightweight foam material that inherently provides structural integrity through its cellular architecture (additive approach). This inversion allows achieving strength with less material.
2Ease of operation
If more material is used for the handle unit, then ergonomics and grippability are improved, but material input and waste increase
Solution Approach 1:
The foam material in the handle unit provides locally optimized properties - the cellular structure offers cushioning and grip enhancement at the surface contact areas while maintaining overall structural integrity. This local quality optimization achieves good ergonomics and grippability without requiring excessive material throughout the entire handle.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the material parameter from solid to foam structure, which fundamentally alters the density and mechanical properties. This parameter change allows the handle to provide enhanced grippability and ergonomic comfort through the foam's compressibility and surface characteristics while using significantly less material than a solid construction would require.
3Reliability
If sustainable and bio-degradable materials are used, then ecological sustainability is improved, but manufacturing complexity and resource constraints increase
Solution Approach 1:
The invention uses bio-degradable plastic materials that can be processed through conventional injection molding techniques. By selecting bio-degradable polymers with appropriate flow and curing characteristics, the material parameter change enables sustainable manufacturing without requiring fundamentally new or complex manufacturing processes, thus resolving the contradiction between ecological sustainability and manufacturing ease.
Data Source
AI summary
An oral hygiene device, in particular a toothbrush, includes at least one application unit and includes at least one handle unit which is connected to the application unit and which has at least one material volume body, wherein the handle unit includes at least one essential hollow-space structure, which is at least substantially delimited by the material volume body and which extends at least over a substantial portion of a main extent of the at least one handle unit.