I was wondering how many seconds it takes to epilate a hair using the blend method? I have read it can take up to 20 seconds. Is it quicker using a computerized machine such as a Silhouet Tone Seq VMC? Thanks in advance for any information anyone can give me.

Depends on the hair structure. When I used a Sil-Tone VMC (very nice epilator, by the way) it took no longer than 7-8 seconds for coarse hair. Blend goes much faster on the VMC than most epilator's I have used. Even for very coarse hair, I have never had to do 20 seconds per hair on the VMC.

That is a good question, and I will share my experience and ask a question of my own. I don't think it should take 20 seconds per cycle (I think the Bono book says 10 seconds is about the max). Here's my thinking based on my experience.

One of the mistakes I made when I upgraded to blend is that set the power (HF and to a lesser extent DC) too low and set the time too high. In a way it seems counterintuitive (though it makes logical sense when you see diagrams of the needle heating pattern) to turn up the power and just reduce the time.

After a lot of fine tuning, I got it down to the point where I can epilate my arm hair with the bulb and root sheath (on the anagen hairs) completely intact and create almost no scabbing I used to run it for several cycles until it felt right (press footswitch, wait for beep, press footswitch, wait for beep...) then tweeze it out. With more tweaking I finally got it down to 2 or 3 cycles.

Here's my treatment example.
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I use an Apilus SM-500, I think the settings are similar in all Apilus models. I am using omniblend mode. Hairs are 60 lye units in size.

At 20% max HF 0.70mA at 9 sec per cycle I was making large scabs and getting inconsistent results. I thought this was "safer" with the HF at only 20% max

At 26% max HF 0.80mA at 5 sec using two cycles I am having great results. I almost halved the time, but increased power just a bit. The only downside to this that the higher the power the more it hurts and at these settings after a while it really smarts

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One thing I am still having a bit of a time with is exactly how much force I should be using when tweezing the hair out. I have to tug a bit, causing a bit of skin tenting and the hairs "pop" out instead of slide out with no resistance. But the anagens come out intact and look perfect. I don't know if I am undertreating the hair because they don't slide out with no resistance, or it doesn't matter because the fact they come out intact with a sheath and bulb indicates it was treated completely.

I didn't answer your question as I started out to.....

Yes, I do think things go quicker with the VMC. You don't have to use the presets - you can go into manual mode and create your own balance of galvanic and HF. I did this for mole hair especially, as those hairs are well nourished and I needed to devise my own levels. Now, you can choose any amount of time that you want as long as you fill the follicle with the correct amount of lye. Longer timing does make it more comfortable if you are having an off day. Just find a units of lye chart and then you will have some guide as to how many units of lye a fine, medium, coarse or very coarse hair follicle needs, and you then you can choose the timing. Since you are DIY, and are not paying anyone, you can afford to go for 20 or more. Just watch the skin surface closely so you can make adjustments if necessary.

If you need a units of lye chart, I will come back and give you that information.

Dee

Hi Dee,

Thank you for the information and if you could provide me with a units of lye chart, I would really appreciate that. I'll admit that I am a little nervous about manually adjusting the machine myself as I liked the idea of it being preset. I will be working with medium and coarse hair, for medium hair on level one, the program is on UniBlend with HF=78% and DC=0.70mA and UL=21 and the time is just a little over 3 seconds. For coarse hair, the program is on Pulsed Blend with HF=72% and DC=0.87mA and UL=32 at 5.50 seconds. Sorry for the long post and thanks again for the help.

Hi VickieCNY,

Thank you for the response and the information.