Sometimes, when I just can't do anything to avoid it, I get my hands dirty. Today, it was a brake job on my old pickup. The nitrile rubber gloves lasted only a few minutes into the project.
While scrubbing my hands, removing more skin than brake dust and wheelbearing grease, I realized that my brush has some problems. The bristles are too large in diameter to clean little cracks and crevices in the skin and around the fingernails. Also, with a normal scrubbing action, the bristles tend to drag across the top of said crevices if the bristles are moving perpendicular to them.
A brush with finer bristles, still relatively stiff, that are moved in a small orbital agitation pattern would address the observed deficiencies.
The electric toothbrushes I've seen don't use the pattern of motion that I think would work best. Aside from that, the form factor of an electric toothbrush is a bit awkward for my intended purpose.
I propose an electric, orbital agitation hand and nail brush with a form factor similar to existing brushes. The handle would be sized to accomodate two C cell or sub-C rechargeable batteries. Also within the handle would be a motor/mechanism to generate the desired motion.
The motion would be transmitted to the brush head through attachment arms, maybe 1" long, perpendicular to the handle at either end of the handle. The entire unit (except the brush bristles) would be encased in silicone rubber to make it waterproof and sanitizable for pre-surgical hand scrubbing.
The brush portion would be maybe 3 inches long by 1/2" wide with fine toothbrush like bristles cut to a length that gives optimal stiffness for skin scrubbing.
The batteries would charge through an inductive coil located somewhere within the rubber skin.
I'd be surprised if this doesn't exist somewhere. Though, in my search, I found vibrating brushes for cleaning upholstery, brushing teeth, brushing hair and for, uh, other purposes that I won't mention here.
I couldn't find anything quite like what I was looking for, but feel free to mark for deletion if you can link to something.-- half, Jun 20 2004 Nice idea. To avoid generating yet more electrical waste, I'd prefer if the mechanism was clockwork though.-- hippo, Jun 20 2024 Instead of batteries, why not run it off the water pressure from the faucet? It could be mounted on the wall of a utility sink and be available whenever.-- minoradjustments, Jun 24 2024 Too simple - it should be a device that is available at the same place you bought the brake parts at, and run off the drivetrain of the vehicle while you still have the wheels off the ground.
It could be rented and returned, or added to the other junk in the vehicle for future use.-- normzone, Jun 25 2024 random, halfbakery