JP2008055123A - Toothbrush - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an earth-friendly toothbrush capable of raising a plaque removal effect, aiming a safe and secure toothbrush to be highly operable in an oral cavity, and focusing on the recycle of a resin, and to provide its manufacturing method. <P>SOLUTION: Bristle tufts 1a wound around bobbins 1 are put through alignment combs 4 fixed to upper and lower robots 3. The aligned brush bristle tufts 1a are grabbed by the alignment combs 4 and lifted by the upper and lower robots 3, so as to be automatically fed by sensors 2. An upper metallic mold pressure board 10 for molding is lowered so as to cover an upper metallic mold 6 for molding. In this case, a tapered pin is inserted into a guide hole 10a as a guide in order to correctly perform positioning. When the lowering of the upper metallic mold pressure board 10 for molding is completed, the resin is simultaneously injected from a resin injection device 11 through a resin injection hole 11a. The resin is correctly injected by a fixed amount by gram control. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a toothbrush used in a general household.

  Conventional toothbrushes on the market are made by bending an appropriate amount of brush in half from the center, and using a brass (copper and zinc alloy) or aluminum plate for the flock holes formed in the toothbrush pattern. A flocked toothbrush in which a bundle of brushes is fixed by cutting and driving to about 2 mm larger than 1.7 mm) is the mainstream.

  Although it has the same shape as a popular type toothbrush, a small amount of welding toothbrushes manufactured by welding an appropriate amount of a bunch of brushes instead of flocking and inserting them into a pattern mold are commercially available.

  In addition, a toothbrush with a 360-degree shape and a non-directional toothbrush, a roller-shaped toothbrush, and a toothbrush with a brush density increased by setting an angle of about 1 to 1.3 degrees on the inside when bundling a bundle of brushes. A wide variety of products are on sale that reflect the current health thinking, such as toothbrushes that have their tips tapered with chemicals and are planted.

Problems to be solved by the inventor

  Since the conventional toothbrushes described above use metal (mainly brass), when considering the reuse of resin, it is necessary to remove all the brushes and remove the metal, and recycling does not proceed slowly. is the current situation.

  Considering Japan alone, tap water used for brushing teeth is soft water (acidic water) with little lime. Brass used for brushing popular toothbrushes is very weak in acidity and easily corrodes. Use of such a metal in the oral cavity is not good in terms of safety and hygiene, and must be overcome. In addition, it is necessary to consider the accident of swallowing infants.

Even with a small amount of welding toothbrushes that have been marketed, the manufacturing method is a method that inserts an appropriate amount of a bundle of brushes into a conventional mold developed in Europe around 1990, and the equipment costs (In the case of molding nylon, PBT, ABS, etc., which are conventional injection molding materials, the injection pressure needs to be several hundred kg to 1 t / cm ² or more.) It becomes.

  In addition, it takes time to inject and dry the resin (the time required for drying varies depending on the resin, but it takes about 1 minute at least after the resin is injected to open the mold). Compared to this, the high cost seems to have delayed the spread.

  The spread type toothbrush has a limitation in terms of mechanism due to its manufacturing method, and it has been impossible to mix yarns such as 0.09 mm and 0.20 mm in a bundle of brushes. This is because there is a concern that a brush with a small diameter may fall out when it is stopped with a metal plate. In addition, the thickness of the brush to be implanted in the flock holes located at positions 24 to 36 is limited to two kinds from the viewpoint of manufacturing cost.

  In addition, the structure of the mold is also limited, and as described above, it is difficult to implant at an angle of 1.3 degrees or more, and there are many problems in terms of manufacturing cost.

  Even when manufacturing a toothbrush that changes the color of the front, middle, back, and brush for infants' toothbrushing practice, in the case of flocking, the number of processes increases by the number of colors (for example, 10 white brushes in 30 flocked holes) When planting 10 yellow brushes and 10 blue brushes, complete the white brush planting for all products, replace the brushes, and work with yellow and blue.

Also in the flocking hole, the mainstream requires a diameter of 1.7 mm and a flocking tensile strength of JIS standard 8 N / cm ² (same as the ISO standard), and the flocking hole depth is 3.5 mm. As a result, the pedestal of the implant brush became as thick as 5 mm at the minimum, and many accidents in which the operability in the oral cavity was badly damaged occurred.

  The present invention is intended to solve the problems of such a conventional structure, and by completely changing the structure, the plaque removal effect is enhanced and the operability in the oral cavity is high. The aim is to become a toothbrush. In addition, we wanted to produce an earth-friendly toothbrush that was small but focused on resin reuse.

Means for solving the problem

  In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the toothbrush of the present invention inserts a bundle of brushes, the tip portion of which is welded and fixed in advance, into a Teflon and fluorine-coated mold to enhance the peelability, and a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide. The resin is poured and bonded, and at the same time, the brush pedestal part is molded. The mold is opened at the same time as the resin is dried, and the product is automatically taken out after the brush cutting, rounding, and disinfection. Reasonable and hygienic.

  By this method, the manufactured toothbrush tip portion can be used by inserting it into a conventional brush handle, or by welding by insert molding, etc., and it can also be used as a tip toothbrush of an electric toothbrush.

  In consideration of cost and production volume, the entire toothbrush can be manufactured in one step by molding the entire toothbrush handle with a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin.

The invention's effect

  As described above, since the toothbrush of the present invention does not require the use of metal (brass or the like), the accident of stagnation due to dropping in the oral cavity and the problem of hygiene due to corrosion have been eliminated.

  In the conventional flocking toothbrush, the depth of the implantation hole needs to be 3.5 mm or more from the aspect of the tensile strength industry standard, and the size of the brush base of about 5 mm is required at the minimum. Therefore, the brush part cannot be made compact in structure, and there are problems in poor operability in the oral cavity, accidents, and brushing on the back surface of the last molar. In contrast, in the welding toothbrush of the present invention, the size of the brush pedestal portion can be suppressed, the brush length can be ensured, and the brush portion can be made compact, thereby solving the problem.

  By using a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin without using metal (such as brass), it becomes chemically the same as the resin component of the brush and can be easily reused.

  From the viewpoint of the structure of the toothbrush, it is easy to make an angle to the bundle of brushes, and the angle is also about 5 degrees compared to the conventional limit of 1.3 degrees (on the mold structure). You can turn it on.

  Moreover, it became possible to mix two or more types of yarns having different diameters into a bundle of brushes, resulting in a product with a higher plaque removal effect than a conventional popular type toothbrush. The reason for this will be briefly explained. Thick threads are effective for removing plaque between teeth, and thin dense threads are used for massaging gingiva and tapering hair is used for removing plaque. It is effective for removing plaque.

  In addition, the conventional popular type toothbrush can easily change the color for each bundle, which has not been possible due to the cost of flocking, and is highly necessary from the viewpoint of accurately instructing infants to brush their teeth.

  The amount of a bunch of brushes can be adjusted freely, and unlike a conventional toothbrush, the shape and size of a stock can be changed. Therefore, a toothbrush with a very high density and a toothbrush with a low density can be manufactured easily.

  Like the effect of the invention described above, it was possible to manufacture a toothbrush excellent in plaque removal ability while suppressing the manufacturing cost. It is also excellent in terms of resource reuse and can be easily recycled.

  The above-mentioned dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin is excellent in adhesion of the spiral brush and the handle in the spiral brush and its manufacturing method (2005-355385) filed on November 10, 2005 by the present inventors. Therefore, complete bonding is possible at low cost.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.

  In the figure, FIG. 1 is an overall view of an apparatus used for carrying out the present invention.

  First, the brush bundle 1 a wound around the bobbin 1 is passed through an alignment comb 4 fixed to the upper and lower robots 3. The aligned brush bundles 1 a are grasped by the alignment comb 4 and raised by the upper and lower robot 3. The brush bundle 1a is automatically supplied by the sensor 2. (Figs. 1-3)

  The brush bundle 1a is constantly located in the lower mold 5 above the alignment comb 4, and is inserted into the upper mold 6 for molding by raising and lowering the vertical robot 3. At this time, accurate positioning is performed using a taper guide pin or the like so that the hole positions of the lower mold 5 and the upper mold 6 for molding are always in a straight line. Reference numeral 4a denotes an alignment comb lowering point, and 5a denotes a lower mold lowering point. (Figs. 4 and 5)

  The brush bundle 1 a inserted into the molding die 6 is then welded by the heater 7. When the brush bundle 1a is inserted, the heater 7 descends to the heater descending point 7a and starts welding. The welding method is considered from the viewpoint that the brush bundle 1a is not colored, and the method using air heat is considered to be optimal, but other methods can be used for easy welding. (Figs. 6 and 7)

  At the same time as the welding is completed, it is cut by the brush cutting device 8 in accordance with the brush length. The cut brush portion is sent to the next process by the conveyor 9. (During welding, the tip of the brush bundle 1a expands into a spherical shape, so that the brush bundle 1a does not fall off from the upper mold 6 for molding.)

  Next, the molding upper mold retainer plate 10 is lowered, and the molding upper mold 6 is covered. At this time, in order to accurately determine the position, a taper pin is inserted into the guide hole 10a as a guide.

  Simultaneously with the completion of the lowering of the upper mold presser plate 10 for molding, resin is injected from the resin injection device 11 through the resin injection hole 11a. The resin is injected accurately and in a fixed amount by gram control. (Fig. 8)

As described above, dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resins can be molded at low pressure (30-50 kg / cm ² ) unlike conventional nylon, PBT, ABS, etc. Equipment can be miniaturized. Therefore, the equipment cost can be kept low, the moldability is high, and the molding efficiency is high.

  When drying of the molded resin is completed, the toothbrush is taken out by the molded product take-out device 12. In this method, a structure in which two to three portions of the toothbrush handle portion are pushed with pins as in the conventional mold removing method is common.

  In the case of an electric toothbrush or a replaceable type toothbrush, a pedestal molded product 13 is used, and a general-use product is an overall molded product 14. (Figs. 9 and 10)

  In addition, this dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin is effective in bonding a spiral cylindrical brush because of its excellent adhesiveness. Reference numeral 15 is a spiral brush, 16 is a resin injection device (for a spiral brush), 17 is a spiral brush handle, and 18 is a completed spiral toothbrush.

Next, a representative chemical structure of a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin is shown.

  The above resin complied with the standards of food hygiene law, food, additives, etc. (Ministry of Health and Welfare Notification No. 370 in 1959) as a result of tests. Issue date May 10, 2006 A certificate is attached for reference.

  The dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin is excellent in adhesion to metals as well as the resin. Therefore, various brushes used for industrial use can be used in various fields. Thereby, also in the industrial brush industry, manufacture of a low-cost and recycle brush becomes easy, and development is also considered. At present, the experimental results of nylon, aluminum, etc. can be said to be good.

It is a general view which shows the toothbrush manufacturing method of this invention. It is the brush supply apparatus front view which wound up the brush bundle. It is a brush up-and-down apparatus oblique direction which raises a brush bundle correctly. FIG. 5 is a diagonal view of a lower mold device for feeding a brush that accurately feeds a bundle of brushes into a molding die. FIG. 3 is a oblique view of a molding die device in which a brush bundle is inserted into a molding die. It is a welding apparatus oblique finger figure which welds and fixes the brush bundle front-end | tip. It is a brush bundle welding completion oblique direction. It is a resin supply apparatus oblique direction. It is a pedestal part molded product oblique direction. FIG. It is a spiral toothbrush welding apparatus front view. FIG. 3 is a completed oblique toothbrush welding oblique view.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Bobbin 1a Brush bundle 2 Sensor 3 Vertical robot 4 Alignment comb 4a Alignment comb descent point 5 Lower mold 5a Lower mold descent point 6 Mold upper mold 7 Heater 7a Heater descent point 7b Brush bundle welding completion shape 8 Brush cutting device 9 Conveyor 10 Mold upper plate holding plate 10a Guide hole 11 Resin injection device 11a Resin injection hole 12 Molded product takeout device 13 Base molded product 14 Overall molded product 15 Swirl brush 16 Resin injection device (for spiral brush)
17 Swirl Brush Handle 18 Swirl Toothbrush

Claims (5)

  A toothbrush in which a bunch of brushes, the tip part of which is welded and fixed, is bonded with a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin and the brush base part is molded at the same time.   A toothbrush in which a bunch of brushes with the tip portion welded and fixed is bonded with a dimer acid-based thermoplastic polyamide resin and the entire toothbrush handle is molded.   The manufacturing method of the toothbrush shown in Claim 1.   A method for manufacturing a toothbrush according to claim 2.   A dimer acid-based thermoplastic as a method of fixing a spiral cylindrical brush to a handle in a handle that has a shape that can be grasped and reciprocated with one hand and a spiral cylindrical brush toothbrush provided at the tip of the handle Toothbrush bonded with polyamide resin.

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