Manually operated rotary toothbrush
OwnerRalph Byrdinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Improvements to a manually operated, rotary bristle toothbrush. A thumb actuated mechanism is slidably and longitudinally mounted in an essentially hollow, elongate handle and a part of the mechanism, a rack, is caused to engage at least one compound pinion/spur gear in order to convert longitudinally reciprocative motion to rotary motion that is shunted toward the head of the toothbrush. The head contains therein one or more rotary bristles that project orthogonally from the head of the toothbrush and off the major longitudinal axis of the device. Rotary motion is conducted by a drive shaft into the head of the brush and transferred via a crown gear to bases of the brush(es) by interface between the crown gear of the drive shaft and at least one brush base comprising a capstan device adapted for rotation.
Claims7
A hand-held rotary toothbrush comprising:
- a hollow, elongated handle containing therein an elongated, recessed groove extending longitudinally along said handle, said groove slidably supporting a sliding mechanism therein, said sliding mechanism including an elongated flat slide extending longitudinally along said handle and received in said groove, a detect which projects from said slide outwardly from the handle for receiving a user's thumb thereon and a rack gear which extends from said slide inwardly inside the handle, said sliding mechanism being adapted to move along said recessed groove in response to a straight, reciprocative actuation force applied to said detect by said holder's thumb;
- a head, operatively secured proximate an end of said handle, said head rotatably housing at least two adjacent gear bases therein, said bases being in rotatable gear contact with one another, each gear base supports a brush element extending from said head;
- an elongated rotary shaft having a rotary gear at one end for transferring a rotary motion thereof to one of said gear bases, said one of said gear bases being in meshing gear contact with said rotary gear of said rotatable shaft;
- and
- gear means disposed within said handle and operatively coupled to said rack gear for converting the movement of said sliding mechanism along said recessed groove, due to the straight, reciprocative actuation force applied to said detent by said holder's thumb, to a rotary motion and for applying said rotary motion to said rotatable shaft.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.