KR20110006326A - Toothbrush including replaceable part - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a toothbrush comprising a handle, a toothbrush head in the form of an extended housing with one side open, and a toothbrush portion having a support for bristles inserted interchangeably in said housing and installed thereon. The toothbrush according to the present invention has a shoulder penetrating into a rear portion of the support and into a hole located in the rear portion of the housing. The support having the shoulder is made of a rubbery elastic material, which enables an elastic seal against the housing and seals the attachment to the hole. The toothbrush portion may be pulled out of the housing through an elastic deformation of the support by applying pressure to the shoulder. The bristles are fixed to the support by welding or injection molding.

A toothbrush comprising a replaceable toothbrush part according to the invention has the effect of avoiding the loss of enormous material, on the other hand, saving resources, and reducing costs for the user.

Description

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The present invention relates to a toothbrush having the features according to the preamble of claim 1. Toothbrushes of this kind are described in German Patent Publication No. 196 24962 A.

The replaceable toothbrush portion of the toothbrush head serves several purposes. Continued use of the toothbrush mainly leads to wear of the toothbrush, especially the bristle end. According to modern dental research, the bristle ends should be rounded in a dome shape to avoid enamel breakage and gum damage. Although modern manufacturing techniques allow for perfect rounding of the bristle ends, the bristle ends wear quickly through use and lose their rounded shape. For example, additional indications appear that the bristles can no longer remain upright. For this reason, toothbrushes that are used three times a day, as recommended by dentists, must be replaced after two weeks. To avoid the loss of enormous material and, on the other hand, to save resources, toothbrushes with interchangeable toothbrush sections are becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, the worn part has to be discarded, on the other hand, the user wants to replace it regularly. As a result, the main part of the toothbrush is reused, so that the user can save considerable costs.

The handle of a conventional toothbrush (French Patent Application No. 2 544 497 A) has a through hole in the area of the toothbrush head which has a large cross section at the side facing the bristles and a small cross section at the back of the toothbrush. . The bristles are inserted into a support having a substantially corresponding cross-sectional shape, and the support inserted into the hole in the handle can be exchanged by applying pressure to the back region when required. The support should be formed of a soft, curable or semi-curable plastic.

 The support can only be secured if it is made of a sufficiently large dimension relative to the cross section of the hole to achieve fixation. This has a relatively large risk of premature separation of the support.

The replaceable toothbrush portion should be installed on the toothbrush head so that it does not detach too easily during use. On the other hand, the toothbrush portion should be able to be exchanged from the toothbrush head with relatively little force, especially without the need for any tools. This need is met by a number of models. German Patent No. 44 34 617 A1 and German Patent No. 37 24 640 C2 have one side open, a groove or protrusion installed therein, which engages when the support is pressed down from the open side into the housing. It is known to form the toothbrush head with a housing in which a corresponding protrusion or groove is installed in the support. here

In this case, the support includes a sealing edge partially overlapping the open bottom surface of the housing.

For discharging the toothbrush portion, the back portion of the support is provided with a projection similar to a pin, which is engaged with a groove formed corresponding to the protrusion portion of the housing rear portion.

Known forms that include a mold-bonded bond between the toothbrush head and the toothbrush portion have the drawback that a gap between the toothbrush head and the toothbrush portion cannot be avoided, in which the liquid, toothpaste residues, etc. are infiltrated by bacteria. This can cause hygiene problems as it accumulates in these damp gaps. This drawback is further increased in that the toothbrush head, which is generally made of a rigid plastic material, is constantly stressed by the holding force that creates bending and fatigue symptoms in the plastic material. This also jeopardizes the secure and durable fixation of the toothbrush portion. In addition, as the size of the gap increases, hygiene problems also increase.

In another known form (German Patent No. 196 24 962 A1) the hygienic problem is that the housing side jaws and the corresponding side of the support should not perform a binding function and thus are tight and tight. Adjacent each other in an undesired manner, whereby the shoulders are resilient within the toothbrush head at the back of the support to avoid gaps between them.

Is fixed in that it is fixed. The insertion of some sealing rings is used for the purpose of obtaining a similar effect (German Patent No. 196 00767 C1), which is in demand for production but unreliable in function.

According to another proposal (German Patent No. 2 311 043 A1), the support is made of a rubber elastic material and is inserted into the toothbrush head having a positive fit. This toothbrush head has the shape of a circular frame open onto the upper and lower sides of the toothbrush head. The rubber elastic support is pressed down into the ring and exits from the back for exchange. The circular toothbrush

The brush head can only have a relatively small diameter and the bristle area is relatively small because the annular housing must have a certain minimum wall thickness for stability reasons. In addition, the deformable volume of the support is small in order to enable sealing of the support to the housing only to a limited extent.

If the support is made with a correspondingly larger dimension to obtain sufficient tightening, the deformation resistance during insertion and ejection is correspondingly higher. That is, insertion and ejection become more difficult. In the known embodiment, the support forms a recess in which dust accumulates on its rear surface.

All of the above known forms have the following drawbacks. In order to bind the bristles into the support and to provide sufficient pull out resistance to the bristles, the bristles must be secured to a predetermined depth within the support.

In conventional toothbrushes the thickness of the toothbrush head is essentially dependent on the fixed depth of the bristles. In the case of a toothbrush comprising a replaceable toothbrush portion, the thickness of the toothbrush head is inevitably increased because the thickness of the support, which must be adapted to the required fixing depth, is increased by the wall thickness of the housing back portion. As a result, the structural height in the toothbrush head area increases, which is undesirable for its use. The toothbrush head should be as thin as possible to prevent excessive bending of the bristles, especially in the case of limited oral areas and in the case of medial molar areas in children. Often it is desirable to have some elasticity within the toothbrush head area, which can achieve a corresponding small toothbrush head strength. Toothbrushes comprising known replaceable toothbrush sections do not meet this need due to the excessive structural height of the toothbrush head.

It is an object of the present invention to produce a toothbrush comprising replaceable parts which can avoid the above drawbacks.

The object is that the support having a shoulder according to the invention is made of a rubber elastic material, elastically seals the housing, seals the hole with the shoulder and when applying pressure to the shoulder, Rubber elastic deformations that bend in and propagate to the support are solved in that they allow the support to separate from the protrusion.

According to the invention, the support is made of a rubber elastic material which allows the toothbrush portion to exit only through the rubbery elastic deformation of the support by applying pressure on the back portion of the support. This on the other hand means that the fixation of the toothbrush portion to the support is carried out primarily by the elastic restoring force of the support material. The holding force and the force during ejection are mainly obtained by the rubber elastic material of the support, which has a very small effect on the toothbrush head so that the toothbrush head is not permanently deformed.

The rubber elastic structure of the support also enables the placement of the means necessary to provide the embossed joint holding force at any position along the structural height of the support. Towards the end, the housing has a protrusion that engages the support in an embossed manner at the side facing the support. This ensures that the holding force is not applied to the housing continuously during insertion and replacement. In exchange, the rubber elasticity of the support is utilized to release the embossed engagement.

However, the deformability of the support and the protrusions can be utilized directly for the elastic sealing of the housing at the front of the open surface. On the other hand, sufficient fixation of the bristles must be ensured despite the rubber elastic structure of the support. This is essentially accomplished according to the invention using, for example, known fixing techniques for welding or injection molding the bristle ends. The fixation form has advantages over conventional crimping techniques in which an annular bristle bundle is fixed in the bristle support by means of a fixation device, which fixation length can be reduced to a minimum so that the support can be made thin. The structural height of the entire toothbrush head can also be reduced. Welding or injection molding provides sufficient fixation of the bristles in spite of the elastic deformation of the support, especially when the toothbrush section is pulled out. A pull out resistance of 25 N can be easily obtained, which is not possible with conventional crimping techniques.

Advantageously the support comprises a continuous edge strip that tightly seals the bottom surface of the housing on its side supporting the bristles, which is a sealing lip due to the rubber elastic properties of the support material. Similarly, close contact is made and additionally prevents the formation of gaps. The sealing lip can partially overlap with the toothbrush head down to its side, thereby simultaneously forming a cover of the outer side of the hard toothbrush head to protect the mucosa.

The fixation of the bristles to the support according to the present invention provides the possibility of securing the bristles to the sealing lip, wherein the bristle uprights are compared to conventional toothbrushes which are disposed significantly apart from the continuous edge of the toothbrush head. The full width of the head can be utilized, or conversely the width of the toothbrush head can be correspondingly reduced.

The present invention relates to a toothbrush comprising a toothbrush head having a handle, a toothbrush head in the form of an extended housing with one side open, and a support for the bristles inserted interchangeably in the housing and installed thereon. By exchanging only parts and allowing the main part of the toothbrush to be reused, there is the effect of avoiding the loss of enormous material, on the other hand, saving resources and saving costs for the user.

The toothbrush shown in FIGS. 1-3 is a support 4 comprising a longitudinal handle 1, a toothbrush head 2, and a bristle upright 5 of the individual bristle bundles 6 shown partially cut away in the drawing. It consists of a replaceable toothbrush portion (3) comprising.

The toothbrush head 2 of the toothbrush is formed from a housing 7 into which the toothbrush part 3 comprising the support 4 is replaceably inserted. The support 4 is made of a rubber elastic material, preferably an elastic polymer having a high compressibility.

The housing 7 comprises a continuous jaw 8 as lateral boundary and is closed by a wall 9 in the direction of the handle 1 (FIGS. 2 and 4). This continuous jaw 8 and the wall 9 define a dimensionally stable framework, which together with the back 10 constitutes a container for the support 4 which is open to the bottom.

In the embodiment shown, the housing 7 comprises a hole 11. The support 4, which is flat on the side of the bristle upright 5, has a flat shape having a contour in its contour corresponding to the contour formed by the inside of the jaw 8 and the wall 9. 13) and a shoulder-like shoulder 14 which penetrates into the hole 11 and is elastically bonded into the hole at the same time. The dog

The part has an end face which slightly projects beyond the back portion 10 of the housing 7 to form a pressure surface 15. This pressure surface 15 may be visually highlighted as shown in FIG. 1 and may have a contoured surface. The hole 11 may be closed by a flexible elastomeric disc, through which the pressure surface 15 can act.

The cross section of the housing 7 may have a rectangular box shape. In this case, the elastic deformation of the support 4 is sufficient for fixing and sealing the toothbrush portion 3. In the embodiment shown, the jaw 8 is slightly inwardly inclined. Here, a projection 12 is arranged inside the jaw 8, and the projection 12 is engaged with a recess 16 formed to correspond to the flat portion 13 of the support 4.

The use arrangement shown in FIGS. 2 and 4 is pushed with one finger onto the pressure face 15 in the direction of the bristle upright 5, whereby the pressure face 15 is bent inward and the support 4 A deformation propagating everywhere facilitates the replacement of the toothbrush portion 3 with a new one, as a result of which the recess is separated from the projection 12 so that the toothbrush portion 3 can be pushed out. this

Thereby the bristle uprights 5 spread outwards without being separated from the support 4.

The bristles 6 of the toothbrush portion 3 are welded to the support 4 (brush bristle 20), or welded into the support 4 (brush bristle 21), or the support material It may also be provided with an extension 17 which is covered by injection molding with a bristle bundle 22. In the embodiment according to FIGS. 1 to 5, the flattened portion 13 of the support 4 has a continuous edge. A strip 23, wherein the continuous edge strip 23 partially outwardly overlaps the open side of the housing 7 and forms a sealing lip which performs an additional sealing function, whereby the mucosa The edge of the housing 7 is covered to provide protection.

In addition to the rubber elastic deformation of the support 4, in the embodiment according to FIG. 6, the hole 11 is provided with a cylindrical wall 18 in the rear part 10 of the housing 7, which is characterized in that the housing ( 7) an inwardly directed projection 19 or a continuous retaining bead on its end face located within 7), which transitions between the shoulder 14 and the plate-like portion 13 of the support 4. Correspondence

To recesses / concaves shaped so as to be shaped.

1 is a plan view of the toothbrush rear portion according to the present invention,

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the toothbrush of FIG. 1 taken along line II-II; FIG.

3 is a plan view of a bristle set of the toothbrush according to the present invention;

4 is a cross-sectional view taken along the line IV-IV of the toothbrush according to FIG.

5 is a cross-sectional view according to FIG. 4 during ejection of a toothbrush section in accordance with the present invention;

6 is a cross-sectional view according to FIG. 4 of yet another embodiment according to the present invention.

Claims (1)

A handle 1, a toothbrush head 2 formed of an extended housing 7 with one side open, a bristle 5 inserted into the housing and installed on the support by welding or injection molding 5. A replaceable toothbrush portion (3) comprising a shoulder (14), wherein the support (4) comprises a shoulder (14) penetrating into a rear portion (11) of a rear portion of the housing (7) at its rear surface, wherein Howe The gong 7 has projections 12, 18 which engage in a positive fit into the support 4 on the surfaces facing the support 4, and the toothbrush exerts pressure on the shoulder 14. In a toothbrush that can be discharged by application, The support 4 including the shoulder 14 is made of a rubber-elastic material, elastically seals the housing 7, and the shoulder 14 of the support seals the hole 11. Wherein, when pressure is applied to the shoulder, the shoulder bends inward, and a rubber-elastic deformation of the support delivered through the support causes the support to be ejected from the protrusion. Toothbrush characterized in that.

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