Anyone ever heard of or seen high speed electrolysis? Some years ago, I stumbled across a YT video which showed an electrolysis session where the technician seemed to move from hair to hair within 2 seconds (in, zap, on to the next). The video did not seem sped up and I was shocked at what I thought were upcoming improvements. I vaguely recall that the video was from another country, maybe Brazil. I’m recently considering a Brazil vacation and just remembered the video. It would be GREAT to track down the office and technician there, but alas, I now can’t find the video! Has anyone here seen such?
Yes, in my own office doing Picoflash or Microfrlash thermolysis.
I have a management system on my Apilus XCELL Pro. It keeps track of insertions and time. I can look at my screen and see the insertion count, which is a lovely feature that Dectro offers, by the way and that insertion count in the manangement system helps me understand what I can humanely do.
If it is on a flat area like a leg, arm, back or side of face, I can easily do 700 insertions per hour, but if I’m super concentrated, I can do 1,200 max insertions per hour. That is rapid electrolysis.
When moving along at this speed, it is important for the Electrologist to see well and perhaps it is helpful to be in automatic mode with no foot switch to hamper the speed factor. Most of all, you need good hand and eye coordination so the speed does not interfere with perfect insertions. This is not meant to be a sloppy horse race, so if an Electrologist can rapidly move along, carefully, disabling hair follicles, we call that finding gold. There are many that can move along steadily like you saw in the YouTube video, but that should not be your only criteria for finding one.
I’m curious Dee about your endorsement of the foot pedal. DO you really find that this gives more speed? I’ve always been pretty quick with the pedal and maybe its just my machine, but I think I’m probably faster with the pedal than the automatic is. The other thing I see is that I think the automatic triggers too early, before the probe is inserted to the root. If the energy at the root is insufficient then the hair wont release.IT takes fully withdrawing from the follicle to reinsert to trigger another pulse which I find inconvenient and probably slower process as well…
Maybe your x-cell triggers differently from earlier apilus models? I’m curious about roughly what percentage of the time you work in automatic, versus using the pedal.
This is all idle curiousity, I really dont have a lot to contribute at the moment. I’ve had to stop practising completely due to an issue here, probably for several months at least. I dont therefore, have very much to contribute other than idle curiousity.
Seana
Hi Seanna.
My foot switch is packed away. I use automatic timing only.
The insert delay is set for under a second for 99% of my cases. When I am saying smoothly on flat territory, like the back, I can set it to .5 of a second . I usually work in the range of .6 - .8 seconds and that is plenty of time to rest the probe at the bottom of the follicle before the the burst of energy releases.
The Apilus Platinum goes down to .1 of a second for the insertion delay, but the XCell Pro starts at .3 of a second. The important concept is getting the probe inserted to the depth of the follicle before the energy bursts. This requires an ergonomic set up and superb vision aid. If you don’t have this, then get the insertion delay up to 1 second or more.
One manufacturer of epilator said would not take the insertion delay below 1 second last I saw. That was a big no no for me. I can’t work that slow.
I hit numbers similar to you… most of my flat area work is between 600-800 hairs per hour, with my best hitting 1238 on someone’s face (using microflash on a Senior 3G).
However, I use the pedal since I feel like I have more control with it, both in the case of the occasional follicle that is a difficult insertion or for the abnormal particularly thick hair in the bunch that is going to require a second burst to release easily. I don’t feel like I lose any speed with the pedal - if anything I feel faster with it.
Going that fast is only worth it if the insertions are accurately placed with the energy properly delivered. You’re much better off with an electrologist that is doing 400 hairs per hour and killing 90% of them than one doing 800 hairs per hour and killing 40%.
There’s the difference, your model has an insertion delay, I’ve not seen such a feature on mine.I too like the contol of the pedal I can get the probe exactly where I want it before I deliver the energy .
Seana
The Senior 3G can go down to 0.1 seconds on the auto delay too. If someone is consistently hitting a perfect insertion in 0.1 seconds from the time the probe touches the skin, more power to them.
I like the automatic delay with no pedal feature, along with the head lighting and surgical lenses and long needle cords because it frees me up to move about more quickly. For me, it helps me work faster and with my determination of delay time, no problem has presented itself yet for me. 0.1 would not work for me; 0.5 is what I need most of the time.
There was a time when I used a Fischer Blend and had one foot pedal for galvanic and one for thermolysis. I never thought I would want to give up that control because timing each manually made me feel that I was doing a better job - until I started working with some of the higher end Apilus epilators. I rarely go back to that kind of manual blend control anymore but it works beautifully too - just a lot slower.
No, i do not use automatic delay anymore.
Using the pedal (operating it with the heal and not the ball of my foot and wearing “Turnschläppchen” which almost retain the feeeling of working bare foot), i am al lot more flexible, can sometimes even interrupt an 0.2s pulse and can go faster than i could ever with auto delay (and i was fast at it, have been at delay times of 0.3-0.5 secs): going to 20-30 ore more hairs per minute like Josefa does is not possible with auto delay anymore.
Wow I really didnt expect such varied answers so quickly from such a large range of top notch professionals to my idle curiousity, all very valid views. Thanks guys!
And to the OP, the only such videos I’ve seen were from Josepha, and she’s in Spain not brazil.
Interesting to hear what other professionals do. As I read the comments, I certainly understand that everyone finds their niche.
Rapid electrolysis is possible, but the insertion must never be comprised.
Many electrologists can select a block of hairs, do 20, 30, 40 insertions and then grasp the hairs as a group, with their fingers, and move onto the next selected block of hairs, doing the same thing. EVERY ELECTROLOGIST DOING THIS STRATEGY KNOWS THAT YOU DONT DO THIS IN ORDER TO CLAIM YOU ARE FAST, WHILE DISREGARDING THE FACT THAT THE GOAL IS TO DISABLE EACH AND EVERY HAIR FOLLICLE THAT YOU TREAT. The statement about a slow Electrologist is favored over a fast Electrologist if it means the slower one “kills” more hair doesn’t make sense. Both scenario’s are possible, but the later one requires more skill and the hair must slide out with no traction. Again, as I said above, this is not a hair race competition.
I am the opposite of Beate. I work faster without the footswitch . It is one less less thing to think about and the fatigue factor doesn’t catch up with me by the end of the day.
So fun to see how we operate out machinery.
Very interesting to see the shop talk! I appreciate the insight of knowing that rapid work is generally possible.
Yeah, unfortunately it wasn’t her.
The fatigue factor is a different issue: i honestly found it less exhausting working with the auto delay.
My point with the slow one potentially being better comes down to having watched people do fast “insertions” just to get their counter numbers up even though they aren’t doing anything in terms of permanent removal.
Doing true insertions properly and fast requires a lot of skill… which some professionals simply don’t have or may have lost with age. I consider myself in the group that can do good, fast insertions.
Much like the debate between galvanic/blend/thermolysis, at the end of the day, it comes down to how many follicles are actually being destroyed over a period of time.
… To which I agree and have always reiterated that here on Hairtell hundreds of times in hundreds of ways. It is one of those concepts that there is no argument about. I trust that any Electrologist sitting in her / his office is aware that they they are in the business of “killing” the hair follicles and they go at the speed that will accomplish that goal.
Speed does matter for the consumer, so setting yourself up for obtaining the fastest, most complete destruction of individual follicles is “A” number one and that takes us right back to quality light and vision aid, proper positioning and FOR ME, epilator choice with certain features, which include a management /statistic system and a delay timer that is less than a second.
I am fast, too, but NEVER do I compromise the insertion, (meaning, disabling the hair follicle), for the sake of bragging about how fast I can go.
Speed is directly proportional to Probe quality also.
There once was a man, a musician of sorts, who had a violin that had just one string. Thus, he was only able to play one note. The orchestra conductor asked him if he was sad to only play that one note. The violinist replied, "Ah yes my ‘one note,’ but just listen to how beautiful that note is.’
All of us have "that beautiful note’ don’t we!