EP0038524A2 - Mascara brush and method for its production - Google Patents

Abstract

1. A mascara brush having a shank and an application portion in the form of a central support which is disposed at its front end from which spaced radial projections originate, the outer surface of the support and the radial projections being provided to retain and dispense the liquid, powdered or pasty medium to be applied, characterised in that the radial projections are thin elongated tentacles (4) and that the outer surface of the support (3) and the tentacles (4) are provided with grooves (5, 6, 8) or ribs (7, 7').

Description

The invention relates to a mascara brush with a handle and an application part arranged at its front end in the form of a central carrier, from which radial projections start. In the previously known.Mascara brushes of the type described above, in addition to embodiments in which the carrier consists of twisted wires between which the bristles are held, in particular designs are known in which thin elongated projections from a carrier made of plastic, so-called tentacles. In order to be able to manufacture mascara brushes as standard with constant quality and relatively low production costs, which still have their advantageous application properties even with a long period of use, it has already been proposed to create the brush in such a way that a tube piece with molded-on tentacles is pre-laid component is clamped onto the handle.

However, these previously known embodiments have the disadvantage that only a relatively limited amount of liquid, pasty or powdery application material sticks to the fine tentacles, or the risk of dripping down is fixed in the case of excessive metering of the application agent.

In order to avoid these difficulties, it is provided according to the present invention that the outer surface of the carrier and / or the projections (tentacles) are provided with grooves or ribs for retaining and metering the liquid or pasty application medium.

By providing such grooves or ribs, which can run both in the longitudinal direction of the pipe section and the tentacles, but should preferably be designed as circumferential transverse grooves or transverse ribs, since in this way the paint or the other application medium is particularly good from the metering grooves or -ribs can be crossed out, the problem of uniform dosing of the application agent can be solved very easily and satisfactorily for all possible application agents. The number and design of the ribs of the grooves can vary in adaptation to the respective degree of viscosity of the application medium, the rib height, of course, being many times behind the length of the tentacles even when they are arranged on the outer jacket of the tube piece.

In addition to the possibility of extrusion-coating the stem with the tube piece and the tentacles, the corresponding indentations or recesses for the grooves or ribs then being arranged in the injection mold, it can also be provided in a further embodiment of the invention that the stem is on itself is provided on the outside of the grooved grooves or ribs which are pressed onto the tube piece. Through this training These metering grooves or ribs need not be provided at all for the tube piece with the tentacles, but a smooth tube piece can be used. The dosing grooves or ribs only become apparent after they are opened. the stem, the grooves or ribs of the stem also serve to firmly anchor the pipe section. In the case of the arrangement of the grooves or ribs on the tentacles, of course, this possibility does not apply. In this case, the grooves or ribs must be injection molded with the tentacles in the mold during the injection molding of the pipe section, and the demoulding does not pose any problems when arranging transverse grooves or ribs, because on the one hand the height or depth of the ribs or grooves only is relatively small and, in addition, the plastic is in most cases very elastic in order to produce a soft brush, the tentacles of which cannot pose a risk of injury to the user.

Finally, it is also within the scope of the invention to design the tube piece closed on the end face, in order in this way to additionally avoid any risk of injury at the tip of the handle, which is usually made of much harder material.

The mascara brushes according to the invention already have very good application properties, but the production of these brushes is still relatively complex and prone to failure, since the demolding of the fine tentacles, especially if they are to be distributed all around the central body and therefore not in a demoulding level may include the risk that they get caught when the mold is opened and thus be torn off. The shape must then be restored before you can continue working. In addition, such fine tentacles - even using the additional grooves or ribs according to the invention - can in particular be applied with low viscosity tel or powdered application medium in some cases does not hold to the desired extent and finally there is the risk that when turning the mascara brush to apply the cosmetic agent to the eyelids, the bent tentacles, which are released again when rotating, will flip forward and thus the cosmetic Is sprayed away.

In order to eliminate these difficulties as well, in a further development of the invention it can be provided that the radial projections are perpendicular to the support axis, preferably rotating discs.

This means that the ribs provided in the basic concept of the present invention and arranged on the outer surface of the carrier are enlarged radially to form such disks and then the fine tentacles are completely eliminated. Conversely, one could also say that a series of tentacles arranged in an axial plane are combined to form a rotating disk.

This replacement of the previous thin thread-like tentacles by rotating disks according to the invention has the advantage, on the one hand, that the application parts could be made of any material, possibly even metal, although, of course, plastic is also the preferred material in the embodiment according to the invention. The disks can hold back viscous or powdered cosmetic agents considerably better than the previously used thread-like tentacles, with the added factor that when the application part is rotated about its axis for the purpose of stripping off the cosmetic agent on the hairs of the eyelids, the aforementioned bending back the tentacle and its rushing with the rotating discs cannot take place.

In a further development of the invention, the disks can be provided with at least one narrow radial incision in order to achieve a connection of the respective receiving spaces between two disks with the neighboring receiving spaces so that the cosmetic agent can be distributed over the length of the brush and unevenness when the agent is taken up or can thus be compensated for in consumption.

In order to prevent a thin-viscous medium from flowing too strongly through the narrow channel thus formed when the mascara brush is pulled out of the storage vessel when the incisions are in alignment, it can be provided in a development of the invention that the incisions are offset from one disc to another , an offset of 180 ° is particularly favorable since it can be produced very easily with the aid of a workpiece consisting of only two molded parts. The disc shape of the projections according to the invention also makes it possible to avoid the difficulty of getting caught in the corresponding shape recesses, as is the case with thin thread-like tentacles.

The diameters of the preferably circular disks can decrease towards the ends in accordance with the tapering design of conventional mascara brushes, the last or the last disks at each end advantageously being able to be designed without the cuts mentioned in order to prevent the cosmetic product from flowing away Avoid the tip or the stem of the mascara breast.

In addition to the one-piece connection of the carrier with the handle, ie preferably a design in which the discs and the handle are injection-molded as a one-piece component in one operation, the application part can also be a separately manufactured component which can be retrofitted with the handle connected is. This can either be achieved in that the carrier has a connector pin for attachment to the front end of the stem, or that, as is known per se, the central carrier is formed as a piece of plastic tube which can be attached to the stem.

The mascara brushes according to the invention, in which the radial projections perpendicular to the carrier axis are preferably thin plastic disks, can finally be improved in the embodiment of the invention, in particular in their application behavior, that the application part has a one-piece part made of foam or soft plastic incorporated splines.

In contrast to the above-described embodiment of mascara brushes according to the invention, in which the circumferential disks were each spaced thin plate-shaped disks, the disks are discus-shaped in accordance with the present further development and not by a rectangular groove, but rather by a keyway that tapers linearly in the middle Cut. This keyway in connection with the formation of the application part from foam or soft plastic results in a very particularly favorable application behavior, which brings about improvements in the case of both powdery and very thin application materials compared to the training variants of mascara brushes according to the invention described above.

The splines should be designed in a development of the invention so that the disc edges form narrow edges, so that the discs can easily pierce between the individual eyelashes to deliver the adhering application agent to the eyelashes. The keyways can either run parallel to each other, or they can also be coiled.

The resulting disks, between which the mentioned keyways are arranged, need not be circular in circumference, i.e. the wrapping of these disks need not be a cylinder. Although this is a preferred basic shape, it can also be advantageous for special applications to use a non-circular cross-section, for example in the form of an ellipse, which additionally taper to the ends of the large semi-axis. In addition, other polygonal cross-sections could also be provided, or cross-sections that result from a circle from which segments are cut out, but that must not extend to the center.

To produce the mascara brushes according to the invention, it can be provided in a further development of the invention that the stems are immediately foamed in a corresponding shape in which the splines are incorporated. Instead, however, a manufacturing process can also be used, in which molded parts made of foam or soft plastic are deep-frozen or the keyways are introduced using cutting tools. This special manufacturing process makes it extremely easy to manufacture mascara brushes made of plastic or foam in terms of their application behavior. The freezing of the moldings makes them so stiff that the machining can take place without any problems. It has been shown that this two-stage machining with machining of the splines is overall no more complex than the injection molding of conventional mascara brush application parts, be it with tentacle-shaped projections or be it with rotating discs. Nevertheless, the application parts according to the invention provide the favorable application properties compared to all previously known arrangements, particularly in the case of problematic application materials.

In the above-mentioned embodiments with non-circular cross-sections, the special cross-sectional shape can of course also be achieved in connection with the machining of the deep-frozen moldings by milling out corresponding longitudinal grooves or segments before incorporating the circumferential splines. Of course, an embodiment can also be selected in which the circumferential grooves are first introduced into a cylindrical blank and then a series of spaced-apart longitudinal grooves are introduced, so that only the star-like projecting parts are then provided with keyways, at least when the longitudinal segments or other flats are radially deeper than the depth of the keyways.

• Fig. 1 eine Ansicht eines erfindungsgemäßen Mascara-Bürstchens,
• Fig. 2 einen vergrößerten Längsschnitt durch den Kopf des Bürstchens, wo-ei links und rechts jeweils unterschiedlich ausgebildete Tentakel dargestellt sind,
• Fig. 3-5 Teilschnitte entsprechend Fig. 2 durch Mascara-Bürstchen mit verschieden ausgebildeten Dosierrillen oder -rippen auf der Außenseite des Rohrstücks,
• Fig. 6 eine Ansicht eines Stiels, an welchen das Rohrstück mit den Tentakeln durch Einlegen und Umspritzen in einer Spritzgießform angebracht wird,
• Fig. 7 eine Ansicht eines erfindungsgemäßen Mascara-Bürstchens mit scheibenförmigen Vorsprüngen,
• Fig. 8 eine vergrößerte perspektivische Teilansicht des Auftragsteils nach Fig. 7 mit fluchtenden Einschnitten der Scheiben,
• Fig. 9 eine der Fig. 8 entsprechende Detailansicht, bei der die Einschnitte von Scheibe zu Scheibe gegeneinander versetzt angeordnet sind,
• Fig.10 einen vergrößerten Teillängsschnitt durch den Auftragsteil eines Mascara-Bürstchens nach den Fig. 7 bis 9, bei welchem der Träger ein auf dem Stiel befestigbares Rohrstück darstellt,
• Fig. 11eine Ansicht eines vorderen Teils eines abgewandelten Mascara-BUrstchens mit einem Auftragsteil aus Schaumstoff oder Weichplastik mit parallel zueinander verlaufenden Keilnuten,
• Fig.12 eine Ansicht einer abgewandelten Ausführungsform mit wendelförmig zusammenhängenden Keilnuten,
• Fig.13 einen Längsschnitt durch die Anordnung nach Fig. 11 und
• Fig.14 einen Querschnitt durch ein Ausführungsbeispiel eines Mascara-Bürstchens nach einem der Ansprüche 11 bis 13 mit unrundem Querschnitt.

Further advantages, features and details of the invention result from the following description of some exemplary embodiments and from the drawing. Show:

• 1 is a view of a mascara brush according to the invention,
• 2 shows an enlarged longitudinal section through the head of the brush, showing differently shaped tentacles on the left and right,
• 3-5 partial sections corresponding to FIG. 2 by mascara brushes with differently shaped metering grooves or ribs on the outside of the pipe section,
• 6 is a view of a stem to which the tube piece with the tentacles is attached by inserting and insert molding in an injection mold,
• 7 is a view of a mascara brush according to the invention with disk-shaped projections,
• 8 shows an enlarged perspective partial view of the application part according to FIG. 7 with aligned incisions of the panes,
• 9 is a detail view corresponding to FIG. 8, in which the incisions from disk to disk are arranged offset from one another,
• 10 shows an enlarged partial longitudinal section through the application part of a mascara brush according to FIGS. 7 to 9, in which the carrier represents a piece of pipe which can be fastened to the handle,
• 11 shows a view of a front part of a modified mascara brush with an application part made of foam or soft plastic with splines running parallel to one another,
• 12 is a view of a modified embodiment with helically connected keyways,
• 13 shows a longitudinal section through the arrangement according to FIGS. 11 and
• 14 shows a cross section through an embodiment of a mascara brush according to one of claims 11 to 13 with a non-circular cross section.

On the tapered front section 1 of the stem 2, a tube piece 3 made of plastic is additionally applied on the front side in the embodiment according to FIGS. 1 to 6, on which radially outwardly projecting tentacles 4 are formed. These tentacles 4 can, as indicated in FIG. 2 on the left side, be provided with longitudinal grooves 5, or, as is indicated in FIG. 2 on the right side, with transverse grooves 6, which are better and, above all, more precise Allow dosing of liquid or pasty application agent. Such an additional dosage is extremely useful, in particular in the case of relatively thin application agents. Instead of longitudinal grooves 5 or transverse grooves 6, longitudinal ribs or transverse ribs can of course also be provided on the tentacles. In addition to these metering grooves or ribs of the tentacles, possibly also instead of the grooves or ribs of the tentacles, 3 metering grooves or ribs should be arranged on the outside of the tube piece, as is shown in the form of circumferential transverse ribs or grooves in FIGS. 5 is indicated. While the circumferential transverse ribs 7 and lateral grooves 8 in the arrangements of FIGS. 3 and 4 are integrally formed directly on the pipe section 3 itself, there are dieQuerrippen 7 'in the arrangement of _F ig. 5 characterized in that the initially cylindrical tube piece 3 is pressed onto the head portion 1 of the stem, which is provided with circumferential ribs 9, which are noticeable as metering ribs 7 'on the outside of the tube piece 3.

Fig. 6 shows a stem 2, the front portion 1 is provided with studs 10 projecting in different directions. The length of the studs 10 corresponds to the wall thickness of the pipe piece 3 to be applied by injection molding, which has the consequence that the studs when inserted into the mold center themselves on the outer wall

On the tapered front section 101 of the stem 102, which carries at the rear end the closure plug 103 used as a handle of the storage container, not shown, in the arrangement according to FIG. 7 an order part 1104 is attached, which consists of a central support 105 and arranged perpendicular to its longitudinal axis there are axially spaced disks 106. The disks, whose diameters decrease towards the two ends, can be provided with narrow incisions 107, which can either be arranged in alignment, as shown in Fig. 8, or offset against each other, as in Fig. 9, so that the communicating connection of the chambers formed by them between two slices of cosmetic means does not cause a low-viscosity cosmetic to flow off quickly even when the application part is held down Means can lead. The central support can, as indicated in FIGS. 7 and 8, be a piece of pipe which has a plug-in pin which can be inserted into a corresponding recess in the front end of the stem 102, the plug-in connection being additionally secured, if necessary, by welding or gluing can be. Instead, it is also possible (see FIG. 10) to design the carrier 105 'as a tube piece which can be fastened on the front end of the stem 102, for example in such a way that the prefabricated application part 105', 106 clamps over the stem 102 is pushed.

In the exemplary embodiments according to FIGS. 11 to 14, an application part 202, preferably made of foam, is either pushed onto the front end of the stem 201 (FIG. 13) or, in the case of the likewise possible formation of soft plastic, possibly also directly molded on. The application part 202 is provided with keyways 203 which, in the case of the arrangement according to FIGS. 11 and 13, lie in parallel planes, while in the arrangement according to FIG. 2 they are helically connected. These splines 203 form disc-shaped disks 204 which end in a narrow edge 205 on the outside. When the order parts 202 are manufactured, a blank is assumed, as is delimited by the dash-dotted lines 206 in FIG. 13. Such a blank is deep-frozen before or after being pushed onto the handle 201. In the deep-frozen state, the keyways 203 can then be machined in using cutting tools.

14 shows an enlarged cross section through another embodiment of a mascara brush according to the invention. The order part is not circular in cross-section, i.e. one does not start from a cylindrical blank, but rather from a blank, the cross section of which is star-shaped. The keyways are then introduced into these in the exemplary embodiment shown. Such configurations are evidently easier to manufacture by overmoulding the handle than by machining, since in any case a more complex tracking of the tool according to the star shape is required.

The invention is not restricted to the exemplary embodiments shown. In addition to other cross-sectional towers of the application part s, the procedure could also be such that firstly, as in FIGS. 11 to 13, circumferential grooves are introduced into a cylindrical blank and that subsequently a series of grooves, in particular wedge-shaped grooves again, are introduced parallel to the longitudinal axis 14, so that similar star designs are formed as in FIG. 14, but in the area of these subsequently introduced grooves the initially circumferential keyways have been removed and are no longer present there.

Claims (21)

1. Mascara brush with a handle and an application part arranged at its front end in the form of a central carrier, from which spaced radial projections start, characterized in that the outer surface of the carrier (3) and / or the projections (4) with grooves ( 5,6,8) or ribs (7,7 ') for retaining and dosing the liquid or pasty application agent. 2. Mascara brush according to claim 1, characterized in that the thin elongated tentacles (4) formed projections or. the carrier (3) with circumferential transverse grooves (6, 8) or ribs (7, 7 ') are provided . 3. Mascara brush according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the handle (1, 2) is extrusion-coated with the application part. 4. Mascara brush according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the handle (1, 2) is provided with grooves or ribs (9) which are formed on the outside of a support which is pressed onto it as a tube piece (3). 5. mascara brush according to claim 4, characterized in that the tube piece (3) is closed at the end. 6. Mascara brush according to claim 1, characterized in that the radial projections perpendicular to the carrier axis, preferably circumferential thin disks (106), preferably made of plastic. ₇ . _Ma scara brush according to claim 6, characterized in _that the disks (106) are provided with at least one narrow radial incision (107). _{8. Ma} scara brush according Ansrpuch 7, characterized in that the incisions d (107) of pulley (106) _ate disc ₍₁₀ 6) against one another, in particular by 180 °, are staggered. _{9. Ma} scara mascara brush according to claim 7 or 8, characterized in that the brush axially limiting divorce are _be formed n (106) without notches (107). _{10th Ma} scara brush according to one of claims 6 to 9, characterized in that the diameters of the preferably circular disks (106) decrease towards the two ends. ₁₁ . _M ascara brush according to one of Claims 6 to 10, characterized in that the central support (105) is connected in one piece to the handle (102). _{12th M} ascara brush according to one of claims 6 to 10, characterized in that the central carrier (105) has a plug-in connection pin (108) for attachment to the front end (101) of the handle (102). ₁₃ . Mascara brush according to one of Claims 6 to 10, characterized in that the central support (105 ') is a plastic tube piece which can be fastened to the handle (102). ₁₄ . _M ascara brush according to one of claims 6 to 10, characterized in that the application part (202) is a one-piece part made of foam or soft plastic with incorporated circumferential keyways (203). 15. mascara brush according to claim 14, characterized in that the splines (203) are arranged so that the disc edges (205) form narrow edges. 16. Mascara brush according to claim 14 or 15, characterized in that the splines (203) run parallel to each other (Fig. 11). 17. Mascara brush according to claim 14 or 15, characterized in that the splines are helically connected (Fig. 12). 18. Mascara brush according to one of claims 14 to 17, characterized in that the application part (202) has a non-circular cross-section. 19. Mascara brush according to claim 18, characterized in that the application part (202) is provided with grooves parallel to the stem axis. 20. A method for producing a mascara brush according to one of claims 14 to 19, characterized in that the stem is foamed in a mold. 21. A method for producing a mascara brush according to any one of claims 14 to 19, characterized in that the keyways are machined into a deep-frozen molding by means of cutting tools.

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