Porto lads create game-changing shaver

Three Porto university students who created a shaver that can be used countless times are now exporting the appliance worldwide.

João Gomes, Luís Oliveira and André Guimarães, three alumni on a mechanical engineering course at Porto University, used their combined knowledge in casting, mechanics, laser and rapid prototyping to develop Tatara Razors, a Made in Portugal shaver that can be used countless times.
Now at a startup incubator at Porto University’s Science and Technology incubator (UPTEC), the cheapest model from the range they have developed costs €149.
They say is a sustainable alternative to multi-blade throw-aways and has a lifetime guarantee.
The idea was to create a durable quality shaver that would lend the product a sustainability over all other kinds of shaver.
“In the United States alone, 200 billion throwaway shavers and replacement shaver heads were produced last year. The majority of these replacement shaver heads end up on landfill sites or in the sea where the (plastic parts) take centuries to decompose,” says João Gomes, the co-founder of the startup at UPTEC.
They called the startup and the product Tatara Razors ((鑪)), a name inspired by the furnaces where the forge masters used to smelt the steel for Samurai swords in ancient Japan. Like the Japanese katanas, the products are made with extreme attention to detail coupled with an obsessive precision of modern engineering to create safety razors that are extremely sensitive and strong.
By noticing that the market is saturated with non-differential direct edge razors (DE), we dare to imagine a clean and elegant safety razor (SR). This one, strongly supported by minimalist trend design and with the goal of reaching a smooth and efficient shaving.
“While in product development we tried several combinations of blade gap, angle, and exposure. Through SR users, we perceived that characteristics like vibration and blade alignment were actually crucial to reach a comfortable and smooth shave,” explains co-founder João Gomes.“Assuring machining tolerances (0.02 mm), we could reinforce the right placing of parts and limit the blade movements between the plate and the cap of the SR,” Gomes adds.
And continues, “However, we noticed that another variable that affects the blade vibration and precision is the perpendicularity between the handle and the head, along with the thread length.
“After that, we decided to bring our mechanical studies to our SR. Consequently, we created a fitting system not only supported by the thread, but also for two internal cylinder sliders,” he says.
The handle itself recesses into the cap when tightened. This added an overall rigidity to the razor. It was how the Masamune (正宗) razor came to life.
The company has been fine-tuning its products and is already selling them in the US, Italy, UK, Singapore, Taiwan and South Africa, mostly online.