Schick Hydro 5 razor teardown

[reagle]

Another  arguably useless consumer bit taken apart and analyzed:
http://kuzyatech.com/schick-hydro-5-razor-teardown
A good example of multiplexing a metric buttload of things to three pins left on a PIC10

[amyk]

So the blades aren't driven by the motor, but the whole thing just vibrates? That doesn't sound very effective.

[mariush]

It's not meant to be effective. Energizer simply bought Schick and Wilkinson and other brands to find new products to put their batteries in and sell more stuff.

Since the inventor of the first dry cell battery joined forces with the inventor of the first portable light back in 1905, Energizer Holdings has been a company fueled by new ideas. But since going public in 2000, our continued commitment to innovation and acquisitions has allowed us to accelerate our growth even further across a broad portfolio of powerful household and personal care brands.

The transformation began largely in 2003, with the purchase of our shaving and personal care brands Schick® and Wilkinson Sword®. In 2007 we acquired Playtex, bringing us leading brands in skin care, sun care, infant care and feminine care. To further strengthen our shaving offerings, we brought in Edge® and Skintimate® brands in 2009 and American Safety Razor/Personna in 2011.

Throughout this growth, we maintained a strong emphasis on fresh thinking which has resulted in groundbreaking products like Schick® Intuition®, Schick Hydro®, LED flashlights and lighting products, and new wireless battery chargers like the Qi-compliant Energizer® Inductive Charger.

Same reason why Gillette uses Duracell batteries in their razors, they bought it :

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/13/business/gillette-to-buy-duracell-for-7-billion.html

In a transaction that combines two of the world's best-known names in consumer products, the Gillette Company said yesterday that it had agreed to acquire Duracell International Inc. for approximately $7 billion in stock.

The agreement, announced jointly, was the culmination of a five-year search by Boston-based Gillette for what Alfred M. Zeien, its chairman and chief executive, has called a ''new leg'' acquisition, one that would take a company that makes everything from razors and toothbrushes to writing instruments into a new product category.

''Duracell emerged head and shoulders above all other candidates,'' Mr. Zeien said in a conference call with analysts and reporters. ''It produces the best-performing, highest-quality battery in the world, bar none, with more than 40 percent of the alkaline battery market. At the checkout counter, there is going to be nobody that can touch what we can do.''

I was gifted one of those Gillette razors, it's basically just a battery, a button, a led and a vibrating motor.  Not sure if there's a microcontroller to control turn on-off but I doubt it.

[reagle]

I didn't realize they are owned by a battery company. Sounds like a good way to make more money
Yes, the whole thing just shakes, what a gimmick!

[SeanB]

That is why I have electric shavers and buy dispoable razors. Electric costs little to run, and the disposable gives me the same shave as the pack of expensive blades. Not surprising seeing as the blades are the same made on the same line, and the plastic mount is the same as the premium one just welded to the handle. The pack of 5 costs the same as a single unit of the "premium" one, and lasts just as long as well.

Funny thing is the Phillips razor I have has a power supply that will charge the internal cells from an input voltage that starts at 12VDC and stops at 250VAC. Not mentioned in the manual, but I looked up the chip as it died. My solution was to simply bypass the whole lot ( chip is unobtanium and the board is more than I would pay for the complete unit) and place a current limiting resistor and use a 12V wall wart as a charger. I also replaced the 2 very old NiCd cells with higher capacity RS cells I had spare, now it runs a lot longer between charges, though now I just have to charge it for 12 hours from empty, and the charge state indicator just blinks as it communicates with the charger for battery status.

[reagle]

My write-up got posted on Adafruit blog
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/11/11/schick-hydro-5-razor-teardown/