Hybrid dental flosser and toothbrush
OwnerMing Lai, Meijuan Yuaninventors
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention contemplates to adapt the shape and movement of a popular manual flosser into an automatic flosser to minimize the learning time required for manipulating automatic dental flossing. The present invention also contemplates to combine the automatic flosser with a popular automatic toothbrush and thus to make the automatic flosser available to the users with substantially no additional cost to the automatic toothbrush. The present invention further contemplates to accomplish circular oscillation of the toothbrush bristles of the automatic toothbrush and side-to-side vibration of the dental floss of the automatic flosser.
Claims17
A dental device comprising:
- a floss holder having an elongate shape with a first end and a second end and having on its first end two tines holding a piece of dental floss and on its second end a fastening element, wherein said two tines are such shaped and bent that said piece of dental floss is held approximately perpendicular to and about 5 to 20 mm away from an axis of said second end;
- a driving handle housing a motorized driving mechanism and having on its first end a driving element and a mounting element, wherein said driving element is driven by said driving mechanism to swing from side to side around an axis affixed on said driving handle, wherein said driving element oscillates at a frequency about 50 to 100 Hz and is confined not to move up and down, and wherein said driving handle has an elongate shape for easy hand holding and said mounting element is secured with said driving handle;
- wherein said floss holder is coupled to said driving handle and said driving element drives said piece of dental floss to oscillate with respect to said driving handle, wherein said piece of dental floss moves from side to side for dental flossing.
A dental device, comprising:
- a floss holder having an elongate shape with a first end and a second end and having on its first end two tines securing a piece of dental floss and on its second end a fastening element, wherein said two tines are such shaped and bent that said piece of dental floss is held approximately perpendicular to an axis of said second end and that said two tines are spaced preferably 15 to 20 mm apart;
- a driving handle housing a motorized driving mechanism and having on its first end a driving shaft and a mounting element, wherein said motorized driving mechanism employing an off-center pin and a sliding slot to drive said driving shaft to oscillate around an axis defined in said driving handle and said driving shaft is confined not to move up and down, and wherein said off-center pin and said sliding slot convert a rotational motion directly to a sinusoidal oscillation of said driving shaft;
- wherein said floss holder is attached and fastened onto said driving shaft of said driving handle via said fastening element, and wherein said floss holder is driven to oscillate from side to side with respect to said driving handle and thus said piece of dental floss is driven to move from side to side to accomplish dental flossing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.