WO2006134478A2

WO2006134478A2 - Hair curling device

Info

Publication number: WO2006134478A2
Application number: PCT/IB2006/001598
Authority: WO
Inventors: Wing Kin Chan
Original assignee: Dickson Industrial Co., Ltd.
Priority date: 2005-06-15
Filing date: 2006-06-15
Publication date: 2006-12-21
Also published as: WO2006134478A3

Abstract

A hair roller (100) for imparting curvature to the hair of a user, the hair roller comprising a generally elongate thermally conductive main body (110) having a first end (120) , a second end (130) and a curved surface curved transversely for imparting curvature to hair,- and insulating rib (160) extending from and around said main body and cooperatively defining with the curved surface of said main body a curvature of hair curls to be formed, said insulating rib (160) being for providing thermal insulation between said main body and a user during use .

Description

HAIR CURLING DEVICE

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to hair styling devices, and more particularly, to hair curling devices including hair curlers and hair rollers.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Hair curling devices are widely used for curling tresses of hair. A typical hair curler comprises curling member having a heated curling surface around which tresses of hair are wrapped to form hair curls. Typically, a user is required to wrap tresses of hair tightly on the heated curling surface so that the tresses of hair will be heated and then assume the curvature of the curling surface on removal from the curling member. When wrapping tresses of hair around the curling member, there are always potential risks that fingers of a user may be burnt by the heated curling surface. Furthermore, conventional hair curlers, for example, hair rollers, comprises a heated curling member and the resulting curls are typically simplex circular curls the curvature of which are entirely dependent on the cross section of the heating member.

Therefore, it will be beneficial if improved hair curlers, for example, hair rollers, mitigating shortcomings of conventional hair rollers are available.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to the present invention, there is provided a hair curler in the form of a hair roller for imparting curvature to the hair of a user, the hair roller comprising a generally elongate thermally conductive main body having a first end, a second end and a curved surface curved transversely for imparting curvature to hair, and an insulating rib extending from and around said main body and cooperatively defining with the curved surface of said main body a curvature of hair curls to be formed, said insulating rib being for providing thermal insulation between said main body and a user during use.

The insulating rib provides a thermally insulating interface to a user to mitigate risks of possible burns when a user is wrapping tresses of hair on a heated hair styling surface of a hair roller. The insulating rib further provides an additional utility as an ancillary curling guide whereby hair curls having a curvature which is a combination of the curvature of the insulating rib and the curvature of the main body can be formed. With this utility, the curvature of hair curls formed by a hair curler is no longer determined solely by the cross section of that hair curler.

In a preferred embodiment, the insulating rib of said hair roller or said hair curler is of helical form and extends at least partway along the length of said main body and defines a helical curvature which in combination with the curvature of said main body cooperatively defines a spiral curvature recess for hair curls to be formed within. This curling device facilitates convenient hair curling while at the same time produces spiral curls having a curvature of which is dependent on the combined curvature of the hair styling surface of the curling device and the curvature of the spiral rib.

In a specific embodiment, said main body has a circular cross section and said curved surface of said main body is circular transversally, and is convexly curved longitudinally between said first and second ends. Preferably, said convexly curved surface of said main body has a convex peak intermediate said first and second ends.

Preferably, said main body is egg-shaped with its convex peak being at the middle between said first and second longitudinal ends.

To mitigate or reduce slippage of hair relative to the curved surface, a frictional surface is preferably formed on said thermally conductive main body. As an example, said frictional surface comprises a layer of a cloth-like or velvet-like material. As a further example, a hairy tuft is formed on said curved surface of said curved surface of said main body. The frictional layer may comprise a thin layer of flocking material which is glued onto said main body to form said hairy tuft.

Preferably, said insulating rib protrudes radially outwards from said main body to define an extent of width of tresses to be curled.

In an exemplary device, said insulating rib protrudes transversally to a longitudinaϊaxis which axis extends between said first and second ends.

Preferably, said insulating rib spirals between said first and second ends so that a substantial length portion of the curling surface of the main body can be utilised.

In a preferred embodiment in which the main body has wine barrel shape with a bulging middle portion, said insulating rib is of a helical form and extends at least partway between said first and second ends with non-constant radius of curvature. Preferably, said insulating rib spirals with the pitch width of between 10-25 mm. This pitch width would provide an appropriate tress size for curling.

Preferably, said insulating rib protrudes for 2-6 mm above said main body. Such a height would provide a useful partition to define the volume of hair tresses being styled.

Preferably, said insulating rib has a width of between 2-4mm. This provides a good balance between maintaining a sufficient curling surface and user comfort when handing the device.

Preferably, said hair roller is palm-sized so that the entire hair roller can be gripped easily by a user. As an example, the distance between said first and second longitudinal ends is between 50-150 mm and preferably 75 mm.

Preferably, said main body comprises first and second longitudinal halves, for example, symmetrical halves, which are fastened together longitudinally. This facilitates more efficient assembly of the main body to maintain lower production costs. As a convenient example, said insulating rib is fastened onto said main body.

Preferably, said main body is formed from of a metal or metal alloy including aluminium, aluminium alloys, steel or the like.

Preferably, said insulating rib is formed from a hard plastics polymeric material.

To provide heat transfer to the device, said main body preferably comprises a hollow compartment surrounded by a metallic wall. For example, heating elements are housed in said hollow compartment to provide direct heating to the main body. Alternatively, said main body may comprise a longitudinally extending bore for receiving into a heating means.

In a preferred embodiment, the transversal cross-section of said main body varies between said first and said second longitudinal ends, and wherein hair curls of different curvatures can be formed by following different longitudinal portions of said curved surface of said main body.

As a further example, said insulating ribs are fin-shaped in transverse cross- section.

Preferably, said main body is disposed between a pair of insulating reels for ease of handling.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be explained in further detail below by way of examples and with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:-

Figs. 1 is a side view of a hair roller of a first preferred embodiment of this invention,

Figs. 1A is a longitudinal cross section of the hair roller of Fig. 1 along section A-A,

Figs. 1B is a longitudinal cross section of the hair roller of Fig. 1 along section B-B of Fig. 1A, Fig. 2 is a second side view of the hair roller of Fig. 1 , the second side view being orthogonal to the first side view of Fig. 1 ,

Fig. 3 is a third side view of the hair roller of Fig. 1 , the second side view being orthogonal to the side view of Fig. 2,

Fig. 4 is a perspective view of the hair roller of Fig. 1 ,

Fig. 5 is an exploded assembly view of the hair roller of Fig. 1 ,

Fig. 6 is a side view of a second preferred embodiment of this invention,

Fig. 7 is a side view of a third preferred embodiment of this invention, and

Fig. 8 is a side view of a third preferred embodiment of this invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Referring firstly to Figs. 1 to 5, there is shown a hair roller 100 according to the present invention. The hair roller 100 comprises a main body 110 which is intermediate a first collar 120 and a second collar 130. The first and the second collars 120, 130 together defines the longitudinal ends of the hair roller and comprises a pair of thermally insulated reels. The first and the second collars 120, 130 are insulating means which are provided to facilitate ease of handling by a user. For example, the end collars can be made of thermal insulators, such as ceramics or hard plastics. In use, a user can grip a collar or the pair of collars and then roll the hair roller onto tresses of hair to form curls.

The main body 110 is egg-shaped and defines a hair styling surface 140 on its exterior. The hair styling surface 140 has a convexly curved outline which outline extends longitudinally along the length of the hair roller and between the first and second collars. The convex peak of the curved outline is midway between the first and the second longitudinal ends of the main body 110. As can be seen from the figures, the curved hair styling surface 140 is symmetrical about a vertical plane containing the longitudinal axis 150 and the hair styling surface 140 is substantially a revolution of the convexly curved outline about the longitudinal axis 150 of the hair roller. In addition, the main body is also symmetrical about a plane orthogonal to the longitudinal axis 150 and intersecting the convex peak.

The convexly curved outline of the main body 110 and the symmetry about the longitudinal axis 150 means that the transversal cross section of the main body 110 is circular and the diameter of the circular cross section varies along the length of the hair roller with the largest diameter at the middle of the hair roller 110 and the smallest diameters at the longitudinal ends. Unlike conventional hair rollers, the main body 110 of this hair roller, as more particularly shown in Fig. 4, has an egg shape or a wine barrel shape with a bulging middle belly portion. Such a unique shape and configuration results in the possibility of providing different hair curling curvatures as described below in more detail.

For good thermal transfer efficiency and for ensuring that heat is evenly distributed on the hair styling surface 140, the main body 140, or at least the hair styling surface, is made or coated of a thermally conductive substance such as metal or metal film or, alternatively, a material of high thermal mass such as porcelain or ceramics. An axial bore 142 is formed on one end of the main body so that the hair roller 100 can be inserted into a heating means, for example, a heated rod type holding device, for heating up the hair styling surface. To provide more instant or direct heating, heating elements 164, for example, resistive heating elements and PTC heaters, are built inside the hair styling body with externally accessible electrical contacts 166 for power supply. The walls of the axial bore is primarily thermal conductive to facilitate efficient heat transfer.

An insulating rib 160 is formed on the main body 110. The insulating rib 160 is in the form of a helix which spirals around the main body 110 and extends between the longitudinal ends 120, 130. More particularly, the insulating rib 160 comprises a fin-shaped rib which follows a helical path and maintains a substantially constant inclination to the longitudinal axis 150 when extending between the longitudinal ends. In this specification, the term spiral is used interchangeably with the term helix where appropriate and the when context requires or permits. Those skilled in the art will readily understand that a spiral and other forms of the word spiral in this specification means a helix in the form of a spiral extending around and along the main body 110. More particularly, the spiralling rib 160 forms a spiral thread which surrounds the internal core of the main body 110. It will be appreciated that the cross-sectional area of the core contained by the spiralling rib 160 is not constant but varies along the length of the hair roller 110 due to the convexly curved longitudinal outline of the main body 110.

As shown in Figs. 2, 3 and 4, the insulating rib 160 covers a substantial portion of the length of the hair roller 100 while only covering a small portion of the surface area of the main body 110 due to its narrow fin structure. The spiralling rib 160 extends radially outwards from the main body and defines the width of hair tresses to be received and curled by the spiral rib 160.

The insulating rib 160 provides a thermally insulated hand grip so that a user can wrap tresses of hair on the main body without fear of being burnt. The insulating grip is further designed, arranged, and adapted so that, by making use of its spiral curvature in combination with the inherent curvature of the main body, spiral hair curls can be formed. As the spirally extending insulating rib extends at an inclination to the longitudinal axis and longitudinally across regions of different cross-sectional, spiral hair curls of varying curvatures are formed.

In the present specific example, the insulating rib 160 has a preferred height of between 2-6 mm above the main body, a preferred pitch width of between 10- 25 mm between adjacent ribs, and a preferred rib width of between 2-4mm. The hair roller 110 is palm-sized so that the entire hair roller can be gripped easily by a user. The preferred distance between the first and second longitudinal ends is between 6-15 cm. As shown in Fig. 3 and 5, the insulating rib is formed initially into a spiral strip, for example, of hard or durable plastics, and is then fastened onto the main body by fastening means, such as screws or glue. The main body 110 is composed of two symmetric halves which are fastened together, for example, by screws.

Before the spiral strip is attached onto the main body 110 to form the spiral insulating rib 160, a layer of frictional substances is applied onto the outer surface of the main body 110 to form a hair styling surface 140 with a thin flocked layer. This flocked layer is introduced to increase friction on the hair styling surface 140 in order to mitigate slipping of tresses of hair. The flocked layer is cloth-like or velvet-like and can be formed by spraying finely chopped wool, hair, cotton waste, or other flocking substances onto the outer surface of the main body after a layer of glue has been applied. This flocked surface on the main body helps to retain hair while being wrapped along the spiral rib 160.

The protruding insulating ribs are made of plastics or other insulating material to mitigate the risk of causing burns to the scalp of a user. Furthermore, although the insulating ribs are shown as a continuous strip, it will be understood by persons skilled in the art that the rib can be intermittent or interrupted along its length without loss of generality.

In the following description, parts which are common to the preferred embodiment of Fig. 1 are denoted with the same numerals for convenience.

In a second preferred embodiment of a hair roller 200 as shown in Fig. 6, the hair roller 200 is identical to that of the hair roller 100 except that a plurality of concentric circular ribs 170 are formed on the main body 110. The circular ribs, which are formed as circular fins similar to the insulating rib 160, are distributed along the length of the hair styling surface 140. The planes of the circular ribs are

/ substantially orthogonal to the longitudinal axis 150. The protruding circular ribs extend radially outwards from the main body and are formed so that tresses of hair can be maintained within slots defined by adjacent pairs of concentric circular ribs for contact hair styling. In a third embodiment as shown in Fig. 7, the hair roller 300 is substantially identical to that of hair roller 200 except that the main body 110c of the hair roller 300 has a concaved outline along the length of the hair roller 300.

In a fourth embodiment as shown in Fig. 8, the hair roller 400 is substantially identical to that of hair rollers 100 & 200 except that no radially extending rib or ribs are formed on the main body. The absence of the insulating guide ribs would allow a user more flexibility in selecting the desirable curl or spiralled curl sizes, although more skills would be required to form good curls or spiral curls.

When using the above rollers, the rollers are firstly heated to a desirable temperature, either by external heating or by internal heating with built in heaters. A user then removes the hair roller from a holding station by gripping a longitudinal collar of the hair roller. After a roller has been moved out of storage, a user holds one longitudinal end of the roller while using another hand to wrap tresses of hair around the hair roller. Where a guide rib, whether a spiral rib or a circular rib, is provided, tresses of hair are wrapped following a path or paths defined by the ribs. After tresses of hair have been tightly wrapped on the roller, heat transfer will occur and will continue until hair is unwrapped from the heated roller or when no more heat is available. Upon removal of hair from the hair roller, hair curls, either plain circular curls or spiral curls, are formed.

While the present invention has been explained by reference to the examples or preferred embodiments of hair rollers described above, it will be appreciated that those are examples to assist understanding of the present invention and are not meant to be restrictive. More particularly, the features of hair rollers described above are readily applicable to other curling devices such as hair curlers or other hair curling means without loss of generality.

Furthermore, while the present invention has been explained by reference to hair rollers having a generally circular cross-section, it should be appreciated that the invention can apply, whether with or without modification, to hair rollers of other cross-sectional or even irregular shape without loss of generality.

Claims

1. A hair roller for imparting curvature to the hair of a user, the hair roller comprising:

• a generally elongate thermally conductive main body having a first end, a second end and a curved surface curved transversely for imparting curvature to hair, and

• an insulating rib extending from and around said main body and cooperatively defining with the curved surface of said main body a curvature of hair curls to be formed, said insulating rib being for providing thermal insulation between said main body and a user during use.

2. A hair roller according to Claim 1 , wherein said insulating rib is of helical form and extends at least partway along the length of said main body and defines a helical curvature which in combination with the curvature of said main body cooperatively defines a spiral curvature recess for hair curls to be formed within.

3. A hair roller according to Claim 2, wherein said curved surface of said main body is circular transversally, and is convexly curved longitudinally between said first and second ends.

4. A hair roller according to Claim 3, wherein said convexly curved surface of said main body has a convex peak intermediate said first and second ends.

5. A hair roller according to Claim 4, wherein said convex peak is at the middle between said first and second ends.

6. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein a frictional surface is formed on said thermally conductive main body for substantially mitigating slippage of hair of a user.

7. A hair roller according to Claim 6, wherein said frictional surface comprises a layer of a cloth-like or velvet-like material.

8. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein a hairy tuft is formed on said curved surface of said main body.

9. A hair roller according to Claim 8, wherein a thin layer of flock is glued onto said curved surface to form said hairy tuft.

10. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib protrudes radially outwardly from said main body.

11. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib protrudes transversally to a longitudinal axis which axis extends between said first and second ends.

12. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib is of a helical form and extends at least partway between said first and second ends with non-constant radius of curvature.

13. A hair roller according to Claim 12, wherein said insulating rib has a pitch width of between 10-25 mm.

14. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib protrudes 2-6 mm from the curved surface of said main body.

15. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib has a width of between 2-4mm.

16. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said hair roller is palm-sized.

17. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein the distance between said first and second ends is between 50-150 mm and preferably at 75 mm.

18. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said main body comprises first and second longitudinal halves which are fastened together longitudinally.

19. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib is fastened onto said main body.

20. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said main body is formed from of a metal or metal alloy including aluminium, aluminium alloys, steel or the like.

21. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said insulating rib is formed from a hard plastics or polymeric material.

22. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein said main body comprises a hollow compartment surrounded by a metallic wall.

23. A hair roller according to Claim 22, wherein heating elements are housed within said hollow compartment.

24. A hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims, wherein the transversal cross-section of said main body varies between said first and said second ends, and wherein hair curls of different curvatures can be formed by following different longitudinal portions of said curved surface of said main body.

25. A hair roller according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said insulating ribs are fin-shaped in transverse cross-section of a rib.

26. A hair roller according to any of the preceding claims! wherein said main body comprises a longitudinally extending bore for receiving a heating means.

27. A hair roller according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said main body is disposed between a pair of thermally insulating reels.

28. A hair styling device comprising a hair roller according to any of the preceding Claims.