The Skarp Razor

The Skarp razor uses lasers instead of blades, here's their Kickstarter website.It'd be great to shave with lasers, but after watching their video I smell a rat. Lots of enthusiastic talk, lots of good video and animations, but no actual demonstration of someone using a laser razor. Anyone know anything about this?--Percy

Numbers don't lie. Set a goal and raise 2 million above your goal and it doesn't really matter if it works or not.

I call major BS on this.The amount of power that would be required to generate a laser beam of sufficient intensity to actually 'cut' facial hair would likely far exceed anything that could be reasonably contained in a hand-held razor. Additionally, it would be generating huge amounts of heat. So while you may avoid razor burn, you are likely going to experience 2nd and 3rd degree burns as a trade off. Unless they plan on having some industrial cooling unit tied into the razor.My guess is the resulting contraption would end up being some kind of Rube Goldberg device:

Almost everything we hear about shaving is BS.Many, many, many, many years ago I read an article about the "razor wars" that broke out when Gillette invented the Safety Razor. Other companies like Wilkinson Sword (whose sword business was in decline) outflanked Gillette's patent by introducing stainless-steel blades, which were answered by Super Blue Blades, which were answered by teflon-coated blades, and so on....When disposable razors were introduced, the warfare broke out again, with double blades, triple blades, up to an idiotic FIVE blades. I predict that eventually razors will be the size of a sheet of plywood, with thousands of blades.But it's all BS. Fancy technology isn't always the answer to low-tech problems. There ain't no magical solution to shaving.

I'm pretty convinced at this point that it's a scam, in the sense that there will never be any laser razor. Launchers of a Kickstarter campaign can just walk away with the money. The presentation is pretty slick, must have cost a bit.The one thing that gives me pause is that two of the principles are genuine names in the field. Christopher Zachary *is* Clinical Professor and Chair, Dermatology, at the University of California, Irvine, and in his video at the bottom of the Kickstarter page he claims to sit on their scientific advisory board. But I could find no confirmation that the Morgan Gustavsson pictured at the kickstarter site in both the video and in a still image (he also briefly appears in the Zachary video) is *the* Morgan Gustavsson with patents and papers about using light to treat skin conditions.Just to do what they've already done would take a fair bit a of money, maybe a few million. There's offices, labs, research, utilities, equipment, computers, designs, prototypes, testing, slick videos, websites, salaries. Is the Kickstarter money just to pay the bills they've already run up?The registrant name for http://wwww.skarptechnologies.com is private - I didn't know you could do that.So I've got no hard evidence to go on, but this just smells to me. They have a delivery date of March, 2016, and even though they haven't lined up a manufacturer yet and supposedly have all these fine tuning issues to address, they already know the price will be $159 (that price is from the Business Insider article, not the Kickstarter site).By April 1^st next year we'll know whether they've come through. Hmm, appropriate date.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I need to initiate a Kickstarter for my Giant Humongo Laser that you use to utterly evaporate approaching cars with those ugly blue headlights that they don't dim after you dim for them.

'Demo video'

I zoomed in as much as I could when viewing that demo.Correct me if I am wrong folks, but doesn't that laser 'beam' actually look like a piece of wire that is deforming as it contacts the skin? I am thinking it might be razor wire that is being heated. The fact that you can actually 'see' the laser beam is kind of telling. Normally, lasers that have cutting capabilities are not visible to the naked eye.Conclusion: I still smell a scam. Along with some burnt flesh and hair.

The text accompanying the video has this explanation:

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The production model will be using a high performance precision manufactured fiber, only possible with mass production automated machinery. This fiber will be of much higher quality.

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This fiber in this video can only be mounted with rudimentary means, this mean it’s not robust. The production model will have a fiber rigidly mounted along the entire cutting edge.

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The laser beam is contained inside the fiber & is also well below eye safe levels.

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Notice the flashes as it cuts. This is the shaving light escaping the fiber into the hair. Sometimes the hair is cut but lightly fuses back onto the hair shaft. This is resolved by gently brushing.

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Watched the video - the razor prototype is pathetic. They explain that it's because the fiber isn't mounted rigidly, while it will be in the manufactured version, but that tells me they don't even have a genuine prototype. Their non-rigid fiber prototype is pathetic at cutting hair, and so they don't even know that a rigid fiber will do a half decent job, let alone be better than existing razors.Steve Jobs was able to keep Next alive for years with no more product than announcements and press releases. The lesson of Next is to pay attention to what they got, not what they say.Applying that lesson to Skarp, they got nothing, just lots of words. Every time they show actual hair being cut it looks really, really pitiful.--Percy

Thanks for clarifying that Modulus. I hadn't read the details.I am still a little confused how this functions. The laser is IN the fiber? So is it heating the fiber to allow for the cutting action? According to the following statement: That almost seems like some derivation of the technology they use for laser hair removal. But frankly, I am still not grasping how this will actually operate. Seems like a lot of techie word salad that isn't actually explaining much.

Me too. Yes. No. Fiber optics are very difficult to heat up and can be used to transmit KWs of light energy of KMs of space with little in the way of heat loss. The laser does not use heat energy to cut the hair:

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Does it produce a smell?

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No. Because we're not actually burning the hair, it doesn't produce a burnt hair smell.

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How it works

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Wavelengths of light had already been discovered that could cut through dark hair, but finding a way to cut light hair was proving incredibly difficult.

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After years of research & development, they discovered a chromophore in the hair that would be cut when hit with a particular light wavelength.

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Chromophores are particles that absorb certain wavelengths (colors) of light.

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This chromophore they identified is shared by every human, regardless of age, gender or race.

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Indeed - the founder of Skarp Tech seems to be something of a pioneer in laser and hair removal technology (read Percy's posts as he seems to have looked into that more directly). He claims to be inventor of IPL, but I don't think he's alone in that claim.The difference with this claimed tech is that it cuts the hair above the skin, rather than in the follicle. I'm not sure how the laser escapes the fibre and into the hair, but other than they have what otherwise looks like plausible near future technology.

That's the part of the mechanism that I also don't understand. Fibers like fiber optics are meant to contain the light with internal reflection. So this 'fiber' appears to operate differently in conjunction with the laser, although I don't see how.I am almost wondering if this is some extension of another shaving 'scam' called the 'No No'. You all may have seen the infomercials on TV trying to sell that thing. Check out the consumer reports review of that device:Does No No Hair Remover Work - Consumer ReportsPerhaps I am being too pessimistic on a potentially new technology, but my instincts tell me this is yet another derivation of attempting to create some 'buzz' around something nifty that actually has very little practical capabilities.

LASER RAZOR blunted by KickStarter ban The Register

Looks like the scam has moved to indiegogo.
Skarp Laser Razor relaunched on Indiegogo after Kickstarter cancellation | WIRED UK
They don't even have proof of concept.
The Skarp Laser Razor: 21st Century Shaving | Indiegogo

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Risks and challenges

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Due to the size of the micro components involved, there will be un-known levels of fine tuning required for automated production in high volume. However we have taken this into consideration for our projected delivery of March 2016.

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Similarly when ramping up delivery of key components, quality control could become a challenge & is of high priority to us.

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The special optical fiber we are ordering with your support is the first of its kind. Everything first time can have un-known risks.

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Many have asked us to show a closer shave with the prototype shaver, and we would love to, but can’t. Here is why.

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The prototype in the demo video can’t cut much closer because the hand-made fiber in the prototype breaks when lightly bouncing it off the skin. It’s made of glass and is very thin. It also can’t be mounted with the necessary support to prevent that. The hand drawn fiber that you see cutting hair in the videos has an un-even surface that doesn’t uniformly couple the laser light into the hair over the whole cutting region.

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Your support will allow us order the new factory made fiber. Please see the time line in the campaign.

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The new fiber design can be mounted rigidly & supported to prevent breaking. It also couples the hair-cutting laser 'blade' evenly into the hairs.

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The new fiber design has an extremely hard surface. We expect it to take several years to wear it out with normal use, but that can’t be tested until we have made it.

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Morgan Gustavsson & his team have decades of experience with bringing new technologies, cosmetic & medical products to market successfully.

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