Medik8 DermaDart (review of deceptive advertizing)

We can prove that Medik8's DermaDart dermaneedling device is marketed with false specifications and that it, being a rebranded DermaJet, very likely still has major construction flaws because it is designed and manufactured by the same incompetent, fraudulent Turkish company that scammed us with that DermaJet of theirs, the DermaDart's identical-looking and identical-working twin. The DermaJet had a near-100% failure rate and we lost 70000 dollars due to this faulty DermaDart predecessor. Medik8's key claims about the DermaDart's specifications, properties and performance are false and we will demonstrate why.

Don't buy a DermaDart - its specs are fake

DermaDart-review

The DermaDart, a device marketet under false pretenses. It's a "fixed up" DermaJet!
Source: Pangaea Labs Ltd. Used for review purposes in "Fair Use".

OwnDoc invented the DermaDart

We invented the key innovation in the way the DermaDart works in 2011 and we published this improved modus operandi (using an electromagnet instead of an ordinary electromotor) on February 14, 2012, long before there was a DermaDart or even a DermaJet:

owndoc-invented-dermadart

Hasan Ercan conceded in a phone conversation with our R&D engineer that he in fact got the idea from us. Yet, Elliot Isaacs of Pangaea labs (owner of the Medik8 brand), who merely purchased the DermaJet rights, claims he is a co-inventor of the electromagnet idea of the DermaDart. He seems pretty proud of the idea he took from us:

DermaDart-electromagnet-ripoff

Source: Pangaea Labs Ltd. Used for review purposes in "Fair Use".

On his site he took credit for our invention, until we exposed him here as a liar. Then it was removed. But Google still showed his claim:
ElliotIsaacs-fake-inventor

Everywhere in their marketing materials Pangaea uses terminology we invented and used first, such as "micro-tearing". They also mention "duty-cycle" a lot, a concept introduced by us, in connection to dermaneedling machines. Pangaea's patent is unenforceable due to our prior art, but it is worthless anyway because we have invented a motor with a much shorter pulse (duty-cycle) than the DermaDart. In addition, our machine uses a sensor to digitally regulate the needling depth so no adapters are required, as with the DermaDart. Our invention is vastly superior to a mere electromagnet and the patent of our invention actually will stand up against scrutiny, whereas Pangaea's patent is not worth the paper it is written on, and we will oppose it for reasons of prior art published by us.

Medik8 DermaDart duty-cycle (pulselength) lies

The Medik8 DermaDart has not a 1 millisecond pulse length or 1% duty cycle, as Pangaea claims. Just like the DermaJet, the DermaDart uses a solenoid of the type used in automotive industry to pull the needles forward and a spring to pull them back. The assertion by Pangaea that the DermaDart has an extremely short duty cycle of 1 ms is absolutely false by a very wide margin, an order of magnitude. The duty cycle is sufficiently short to avoid microtearing however, but it is not nearly as short as 1 ms. This is from their site:

DermaDart-Nonsense

Source: Pangaea DermaDart website

DermaDart-Lie

Source: Pangaea DermaDart website

DermaDart-review-bad-machine

Source: Pangaea DermaDart website

DarmaDart-Review2

Source: Pangaea DermaDart website

There is nothing unique about moving things with an electromagnet. Toy robots use them, electric valves use them, they are the most ubiquitous. The "launches needles in 1 millisecond" is an outright lie. We measured the duty-cycle of the DermaJet and it is an order of magnitude slower than that. The DermaDart certainly does not have a 1 ms duty cycle, neither does it have a 1% duty-cycle. This would be an engineering impossibility. The mass of the moving part is too high for that, and the magnetic remanence also doesn't cooperate. 10 ms for 2 mm penetration is about the best achievable with current technology. Which would mean a 1% duty-cycle for 1 Hz operation only. 10 Hz would mean 10% duty cycle and 35 Hz 35% duty cycle.

A 35% duty-cycle instead of 1%

But the DermaDart claims to offer 35 Hz max. speed, which would mean a duty cycle of 35 x 10 ms = 350 ms down in a total of 1000 ms, totalling 35% duty-cycle, a whopping 35 times worse than they fence with. Even at 20 Hz, a typically used and recommendable speed, the duty-cycle would be around 20%, if they use the best technology available. So again, it's very deceptive advertising. "Duty-cycle" means the total, average active percentage over time. Noone will use the machine on 1 punch per second so the 1% claim is irrelevant, inapplicable and therefore deliberately misleading. The DermaDart uses the same type of solenoid as the DermaJet, and we tested that one exhaustively. Moreover, we have our in-house R&D lab where we tested various solenoid-based needling motors and a much shorter duty cycle than 10 ms for 2 mm is just unattainable. 1 ms is hard-core science fiction. The claims likely have not been originally written by Pangaea but come from the Turkish scammers (the manufacturer), as Hasan Ercan capitalizes a lot of words (such as "Needles" and "Faster") that need no capitalization. And Pangaea again fell for Ercan's story hook, line and sinker. We suffered tremendous damage, believing that nonsense, and our customers suffered as a result. We will give our DermaJet customers a free Derminator® when their replacement DermaJet breaks. Some are on their 3rd or even 4th replacement.

DermaDart: Rebranded, "fixed" piece of crap

DermaJet-exploded

The DermaJet (rebranded to DermaDart), a fatally flawed device in many respects.
Source: Photo made in our R&D lab.

The DermaDart's predecessor is the DermaJet, to which we have been granted the sole worldwide sales rights by the Turkish manufacturer. As is visible in the picture, the DermaJet looks identical to the DermaDart and is also functionally identical. We sold the DermaJet until too many customers complained of a variety of catastrophic failures. A non-exhaustive list:

  • The device overheated with prolonged use and stopped working
  • The device started to rattle and not needle with the correct frequency or depth any more
  • The device's magnet holder broke off
  • The device's magnet pulverized
  • The device knocked out a resistor from its PCB at first operation, rendering it useless
  • The device did not work due to glue rests in its mains adapter
  • The device's switch cover came off and was impossible to put back
  • The device's signal lights stopped working
  • The device was scratched and dirty and its box was torn

This picture illustrates one of the many design flaws in the DermaJet:

FlawedDermaJet

The DermaDart is a DermaJet clone, but it does not seem that all DermaJet flaws been eliminated. The DermaJet was a disaster, a criminal scam. The following are just some of the countless user complaints we received. Our own examination of the device revealed horrific workmanship that makes the device illegal to sell anywhere in the world:

  • Damaged insulation on wires
  • No fuse holder but wires hand-solderd on the fuse, weakening the fuse body (can come apart)
  • Parts glued together with silicone, preventing proper heat dissipation
  • Extremely shoddy hand-soldering, very dirty, messy, damaged internals
  • High voltage used on finger-accessible places, against CE norm

The DermaDart's CE marking is a lie

CE marking is a promise by the manufacturer to comply with regulations, not an awarded certification. As we mentioned: Illegally high voltage on finger-accessible places! Everything we say is always backed up by evidence. Of course we have mountains of evidence for everything we say, because UK defamation laws are notoriously strict and we're residing in Europe so it's very easy for Pangaea Ltd. to sue us. Here is a photo of us measuring the voltage on the DermaJet's power supply connector where the handset is plugged into:

dermaDart review

Lethal voltage exposed to fingers

That's a deadly voltage, and a small child will be able to get her finger in there. Such dangerous devices are illegal to sell and certainly do not conform to the CE norms. Note the liberal application of silicone also in the PSU. The oscilloscope's readout is set to 20 Volts per division. The peak-peak voltage on that connector is 150 V! An adult likely can't get their finger deeply enough in that connector to get a shock, but a small child certainly can. We do not know whether the DermaDart also suffers from this flaw, but it shows the callous disregard for safety and regulations by the manufacturer - the manufacturer of the DermaDart, a rebranded DermaJet.

DermaJet-Voltage

Such a high voltage means the manufacturer is not allowed to put a CE marking on their devices, because this violates the CE marking's Low Voltage Directive.

Teknomedikal's Hasan Ercan lied when he marked the DermaDart with the CE mark. It is a misunderstanding that a CE mark is a certification. It is a promise by the manufacturer (in this case a criminal with crazy-bad products) that it conforms to various EU rules. When we say "criminal", we mean it. The only reason we haven't sued him yet or reported him to the police is the abject inefficiency of the Turkish law enforcement and judicial system. Turkey is a corrupt, backward country. We paid the price for doing business with a Turkish gangster. We do not know for sure whether the DermaDart suffers from the same flaw as the DermaJet, but we think it is highly likely, considering Pangaea's apparent incompetence in the field of electronics (otherwise they would never have purchased the rights to the DermaJet) and seen the fact that that the manufacturer of the DermaJet (and, presumably, the DermaDart) appears to be a full-blown malicious sociopath who will do anything to squeeze the last drop of profit out of an electronic design, even if it means children will be electrocuted or their house will catch fire.

There is more evidence the DermaDart still uses 150 Volt in places it is not allowed and/or dangerous: Pangaea admits on their site that the DermaDart uses a 24V solenoid, and that is the same nominal coil voltage as used in the DermaJet. And in order to drive that solenoid hard enough for a sufficiently short duty-cycle, a much higher, pulsed voltage is used - namely 150 volt.

Here is a DermaJet with damage to a wire:

Detail-damaged-wire

Source: Photo made in our lab of device returned by customer

Some of those wires carry an unsafe, high voltage. Presumably also in the DermaDart. And look how easy it is for the human body to come into contact with a potentially dangerous voltage.. This switch looks the same on the DermaJet as it does on the DermaDart, and on the DermaJet, these switches break all the time:

BrokenSwitch

Source: Photo sent to us by customer

DermaDart lies about the power supply

Pangaea claims that the DermaDart has a 100 W power supply. This is obviously an attempt to give the impression of a solid, powerful device but it is a lie.

DermaDartBadReview

Source: Pangaea's DermaDart website

Let's calculate the power used by their solenoid if their claims about duty cycle and power supply wattage would be true:

They claim that the machine has its needles at most 1% in the skin. That means that the needle-down power is applied at the very most 0.5% of the time. That means that if Pangaea did not lie about the PSU being 100 W, that 100 W is supplied to the solenoid on average, because if 100 W would be required only on average, with a 1% duty cycle, a 1W PSU would suffice, which is vastly cheaper. Hence, if Pangaea did not lie about their PSU being 100 W, their 24 V coil uses 200 x 100 = 20 KW, when engaged. That would be an average power usage of 100W, because it's only on 0.5% of the time, as they claim with their 1% needle duty-cycle. The coil being 24V, the current would be 20000 / 24 = 833 Ampere. The resistance of the coil would need to be 24 / 833 = 0.029 Ω. That would require a very thick wire, with very few windings. How thick and how few windings? 1 mm thick wire is the thickest that can be practically wound on a relatively small coil. It's even an unrealistically thick value, but we choose it to give Pangaea as much benefit of the doubt as possible. The resistance of such wire is 2.26 Ω/m. That means that a length of 1 mm dia wire with a resistance of 0.029 Ω has a length of 100 cm / (2.26 / 0.029) = 1.28 cm. And that's too short to get even one winding on the coil, because the length required for a single winding would be approx. 5 cm, which would mean a coil diameter of 5 /π = 1.6 cm, which is about the average diameter of the coil used in the DermaJet. Conclusion: By the laws of nature, Pangaea's claims about their machine can't possibly be true. They lie about duty cycle and power supply. How do we know this? Let's say the power supply is 10W, which is a much more reasonable number for such a device and similar to the PSU used in the DermaJet. Then, if their claim of duty cycle would be correct, the copper wire would be 12.8 cm instead of 1.28 cm. that would yield two windings for the coil, a ridiculous number. Such electromagnet solenoids do not exist, and with good reason. This means that the duty cycle can't possibly be 1% either. It must be closer to 35%, as we explained before. That would give 70 windings on the coil - still very little. We know that the DermaJet uses 150 V on its coil, and that would be doable, even with a 24V coil, in burst. So the DermaDart, a DermaJet clone likely also uses 150 V. That would make 70 * (150 / 24) = 438 windings for their coil. And that number is a typical value for linear motor solenoids.

Pangaea claims that the DermaDart is virtually painless. Also that is a lie. We have more than 100 dermaJet customers and they often said that needling with the device hurt. The DermaDart works the same way. Our upcoming device has a shorter duty cycle than the DermaJet and therefore hurts much less.

DermaDart: Review of their claims - our verdict

The device is sold on a variety of false claims. It likely is of inferior quality and its CE marking is bogus. The DermaDart is extremely expensive compared to its total cost of manufacture, which is at most 50 dollars. The DermaDart contains approx. 5 dollars worth of electronics. The 50 dollar total production cost includes assembly in Turkey, packaging and injection molding. Our own, upcoming digital Derminator® skin needling device (patent pending) is of much higher quality, vastly more capable, contains much more (expensive) electronics such as a US-made switching power supply and will be sold for about a third of what the DermaDart is sold for. Our cartridges will also be three times cheaper.

DermaDart made in Turkey by a scam company

The DermaDart is made by the same company that produced the severely-flawed DermaJet (before it was rebaptized "DermaDart"). The DermaJet had a near-100% failure rate for a wide variety of reasons.

DermaDart-made-in-Turkey

DermaDart-box

Source: Pangaea's DermaDart website

As a comparison, this is the DermaDart box. The only things that have changed is the green color instead of the red, and the omission of the fact that the device is produced in Turkey (by Teknomedikal). Teknomedikal is a company run by the criminal Hasan Ercan. Mr. Ercan defrauded us of $50000,- through false claims and promises, breech of contract, supply of knowingly faulty devices under false pretenses and a refusal to compensate our damages. Ercan's products are of abysmal quality - worse than anything we've ever seen. A blind drunk child with cerebral palsy would do a better job soldering these things together, even without soldering experience. Not to mention that you have to be a clinical psychopath to come up with the absolutely criminally insane design of the thing, with dangerous voltages exposed and the higher the voltages, the more careless the design. The details how Hasan Ercan of Teknomedikal scammed us are here. The DermaJet, a device that looks and works identical to the DermaDart, had a near 100% failure rate with 120 of our customers. We lost $50000,- directly through the scam, and $20000,- indirectly. Pangaea is a victim of Ercan's fraud as we are, but then again, Pangaea did a hostile takeover of our sales rights to the DermaJet device, which they rebranded as "DermaDart". So they deserved to get burnt. They should have done better due dilligence than we did, when doing business with Hasan Ercan/Teknomedikal.

Pangaea refuses to repair our broken DermaJets

Our solicitor Susan Singleton told us that according to UK law, Pangaea, having taken over the rights to the DermaJet, has also taken over existing liabilities as to the repair of broken devices. So if this liability has not been excluded in their contract with Teknomedikal, Pangaea would be liable. Pangaea refuses to compensate us and they also refuse to prove to us that they negotiated liability exclusion with Teknomedikal. Teknomedikal claims that they did not sign an exclusion clause. If that is true, Pangaea is in breech of contract.

Pangaea's DermaDart patent is invalid

We invented the DermaDart, so Pangaea is guilty of frivolously filing a fraudulent patent, where the shameless Elliot Isaacs has the audacity to claim to be a co-inventor of the device, where in fact we published the electromagnet idea and they and Teknomedikal copied it. Of course it's always possible to improve upon an idea, and our Derminator device is a quantum leap from a mere electromagnet drive: It uses three separate magnetic fields and a microprocessor to digitally and dynamically control the needling depth with extreme accuracy.

Our Derminator® "terminates" skin flaws as well as the competition

Our Derminator® has a unique advanced drive system that is digitally set to electronically regulate the needling depth via sensor feedback.  Read about its benefits and specifications and see for yourself how other electric dermaneedling devices cause severe microtearing.

The Derminator comes much closer to what Pangaea claims for their own device, the DermaDart. It offers an extremely low duty cycle, near-painlessness (due to the short duty cycle) and fully digital needle length adjustment instead of the cumbersome need to keep changing length adaptors, as is necessary with the DermaDart. Since the device is digital, it shows how many skin channels have been made so the user can achieve an exact target prick density. The Derminator inflicts so little pain that our R&D engineer routinely tests the feedback sensor system by needling himself on the 2 mm setting. Micro-tearing does not occur with our machine.

We have suffered serious losses to our finances and reputation by the dishonest, unethical and illegal actions of the DermaDart vendor and -producer, but we're coming out of this stronger than we went in, with our own machine, invented and built by ourselves:

 Derminator-owndoc

This article was published on Dec 10, 2013 @ 22:15



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