Actuator for a personal care appliance comprising a housing, a spindle, a tangential actuator portion, an axial actuator portion, and a controller. The tangential actuator portion comprises a first magnet and pole assembly having a first sequence of individual grouped magnet segments spaced apart within the housing in a first radial orientation and polarity order, and a first pole assembly of pole members in a first radial configuration about the spindle, a second magnet and pole assembly having a second sequence of individual grouped magnet segments spaced apart within the housing in a second radial orientation and polarity order, and a second pole assembly of pole members in a second radial configuration about the spindle, and an electromagnetic coil disposed about the spindle in-between the first and second magnet and pole assemblies. The tangential actuator portion rotationally displaces the spindle with respect to the housing about a principal axis.

A personal hygiene device has a handle, a treatment head, and a motor carrier disposed in the handle. The motor is pivot-mounted against at least one spring element arranged between the handle and the motor carrier. The motor has a stator portion fixedly mounted at the motor carrier and an armature portion spring mounted at the motor carrier to allow a motion relative to the motor carrier. The armature portion is coupled with a drive shaft connected with the treatment head for transferring motion thereto, wherein an external treatment force acting on the brush head leads to pivoting of the motor carrier relative to the handle. The motor has a motor permanent magnet and a coil for providing an alternating electromagnetic field interacting therewith to excite an oscillating motion of the drive shaft. A Hall sensor is fixedly mounted to the handle or to the motor carrier; and a sensor permanent magnet is fixedly mounted to the other one of the handle and motor carrier, so that a pivoting motion of the motor carrier leads to a relative movement between the sensor permanent magnet and the Hall sensor.

A powered toothbrush apparatus with capacitive touch control, which includes a head portion having an oscillating tuft block driven by a motor, a handle portion, and an elastically deformable capacitive touch control panel mounted in the handle portion. In one embodiment, the control panel includes movable sensor targets each paired with a corresponding capacitance sensor electrically connected to a programmable microprocessor. Applying finger pressure on the control panel adjacent a sensor target operates to change the capacitance of the respective sensor target-sensor pair. The microprocessor detects the change in capacitance, which may be used to control the motor speed for changing the oscillation rate of the tuft block. In one embodiment, a linear array of sensor targets-sensors is provided which is activated by a sliding finger or thumb motion across the array. A related operating method is disclosed.

An electric toothbrush according to the present disclosure includes: a shaft to which a brush is attached; a primary drive unit that operates the shaft to let the brush perform a cleaning motion; and a supplementary drive unit that enables the shaft to move eccentrically. Accordingly, the electric toothbrush can facilitate entry of bristles of the brush between teeth and improve performance of cleaning between the teeth.

The present disclosure is concerned with a motion converter structured for converting a rotational motion provided by a motor shaft into a linear reciprocating motion of a drive shaft. The motion converter has a deformable unit, a mounting unit connected with the deformable unit, a coupling unit connected with the deformable unit, the coupling unit being structured to receive the drive shaft or the coupling unit comprising the drive shaft, a connector unit connected with the deformable unit, the connector unit comprising at least a first essentially U-shaped receiver being structured for receiving a first eccentric shaft element of the motor shaft and having a U-base and two U-legs together defining a first elongated hole having a length, a width and a height, and a first bracing element that connects the two U-legs of the first essentially U-shaped receiver on their free ends such that access into the first elongated hole across the width and the height of the first elongated hole is provided, preferably where the first bracing element is bar-shaped or U-shaped or O-shaped, and where the length is measured from an inner surface of the U-base to the free ends of the U-legs.

The transmission according to the invention for an electric toothbrush serves for the transmission and reforming of a rotational movement provided by an electric motor into a particularly careful and effective cleaning movement of a cleaning element. The ratio of the distance between the longitudinal mid-axis of an output shaft and the longitudinal mid-axis of a drive shaft of the transmission and of the distance between the longitudinal mid-axis of a shaft driving a cam of the transmission and the longitudinal mid-axis of the cam amounts to at least 10:1.

A linear actuator that can achieve downsizing with a simple configuration, and can provide stable linear reciprocation while achieving improvement in assemblability and cost reduction. In the actuator, movable member 50 faces coil 21 in the winding axis CL direction of coil 21, and in addition, includes magnet 30 magnetized in the coil-winding axis CL direction in a unipolar fashion and output shaft 60 extending in the CL direction. Elastic body 70 is disposed along the coil-winding axis CL direction and configured to deform in that direction to supports movable member 50 such that movable member 50 can reciprocate along the coil-winding axis CL direction. Elastic body 70 is fixed to fixing body 40 and movable member 50 at both ends 71 and 72 in the coil-winding axis CL direction such that central air gap CG is formed between electromagnet 20 and magnet 30.

Provided is a linear actuator which is simple in structure, inexpensive to manufacture, in addition, has small magnetic leakage, and can provide a large inertial force without increasing the number of parts and weight. The linear actuator is provided with an output shaft 12 which is supported on a supporting case 11 so as to linearly reciprocate freely, an elastic member 13 which biases the output shaft 12 toward a middle position of the linear reciprocation thereof, a permanent magnet 14 which is fixed to the output shaft 12, a coil 15 which linearly reciprocates the output shaft 12 by having a variable magnetic field act on the permanent magnet 14 and is fixed to the supporting case 11 such that the coil 15 faces one of magnetic poles of the permanent magnet 14, a yoke 16, which is composed of a magnetic material, has a midway portion tightly secured to the other magnetic pole of the permanent magnet 14, extends to the exterior of the coil 15 along the exterior of the permanent magnet 14 with a space from the permanent magnet 14, and has an end portion disposed close to the exterior of the coil 15, and power supply means for forming a variable magnetic field on the coil 15.

A device for converting a rotating motion into a reciprocating motion comprises a motor having a rotatable motor shaft carrying cylindrical component, an embedded cam groove of the cylindrical component, a rod component constrained to travel back and forth and forth, and a cam follower carried on the rod component. The cam follower is engaged in the embedded cam groove track of the cylindrical component so that as the rotatable motor shaft rotates, the cam follower transmits the movement dictated by the embedded cam groove track profile thereby causing the rod component to travel back and forth once for each rotation of rotatable motor shaft. There is also disclosed a mascara applicator assembly; a first electric toothbrush assembly; and a second electric toothbrush assembly comprising such a device.

The transmission according to the invention for an electric toothbrush serves for the transmission and reforming of a rotational movement provided by an electric motor into a particularly careful and effective cleaning movement of a cleaning element. The ratio of the distance between the longitudinal mid-axis of an output shaft and the longitudinal mid-axis of a drive shaft of the transmission and of the distance between the longitudinal mid-axis of a shaft driving a cam of the transmission and the longitudinal mid-axis of the cam amounts to at least 10:1.