alt.hn

4/29/2026 at 2:42:46 AM

I built my own hair electrolysis machine

 https://www.scd31.com/posts/diy-hair-electrolysis-machine

by y1n0

4/29/2026 at 9:24:50 PM

I have soooo many questions. Approximate hardware cost? Pain of needle? Pain of zap? How does the sensation of your machine compare to commerical applications? How long has it been since the first tests? Results from those tests? Is there some sensation that indicates having inserted to the proper depth? Is it an increase in resistance or an increase in pain? Have you used it anyhwere but the hand? Does the pain scale the same way everything else does (like the lip and chin hurt more than the arms?)

Full disclosure, I may or may not have caused some scarring having attempted to do this in a very rudimentary way with some 9volts when I thought that it was purely the heat from the electricity that we were after. This seems to be a vast improvement over the nightmare I came up with, even with the car battery as at least you've got voltage regulation.

>this board contains one or more chemicals known to the state of california to cause feminization :3 :3 :3 :3

You are a legend and an inspiration.

by goodmythical

5/4/2026 at 1:42:34 AM

I get electrolysis (from a professional, not DIY, lol) and it does hurt a fair bit, but it's not intolerable for me. It's roughly the pain of tweezing a hair, only repeated a couple hundred times per session. I put on a podcast and just kind of get through it.

If this has been done appropriately and safely, it should be similar.

One thing I will mention, having watched the video, is that I think this goes about the same speed as what the pros do? It takes around 20 seconds for removal of the whole hair (about 10 seconds of current plus 10 seconds tweezing, inserting needle, etc.) in the video. My tech can usually remove around 200 hairs in an hour, which comes out to about the same (200 / 60 = 3.33 hairs per minute = around 18 seconds a hair).

by ivraatiems

5/4/2026 at 2:16:29 AM

oh wow, your tech must be real slow. Mine will do a hair every 5 seconds. But she’s been doing it for 20 years.

I find this invasion of hacker news by trans women talking about hair removal delightful and hilarious. (Of course, we were all here all along.)

by throwawa-486297

5/4/2026 at 10:40:25 AM

I do not understand why you would describe it as hilarious tbh.

But the hacker scene itself has quite a high and open trans culture. At least on hacker events, camps and congresses like from the ccc, i see quite 'a lot' of trans people.

And that for years if not decades by now.

by AntiUSAbah

5/4/2026 at 10:44:30 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

5/4/2026 at 2:48:24 AM

Yeah, my tech is a trainee. I'm sure one who's been doing it for years would go faster, but she's inexpensive and I don't mind helping her learn! The results have been solid so far.

by ivraatiems

4/29/2026 at 1:52:50 PM

Hell yeah. I feel like if the world ended there would be a group of trans woman with a wind powered experimental estrogen generator inside of a week.

by WillMorr

4/29/2026 at 7:20:34 PM

I mean, it's just a fancy hydrocarbon, and in some form or another can be extracted from female mammal urine.

I imagine there's a way to genetically alter yeasts to make estrobeer while they're at it, with the side benefit that the alcohol would serve as a natural testosterone reducer for a double d whammy.

by BizarroLand

5/3/2026 at 11:16:28 PM

Can confirm, I’ve extracted estrogen from my own urine.

by kaikai

5/4/2026 at 12:15:43 AM

How did you detect/measure the estrogen after the extraction process?

by seabass-labrax

5/3/2026 at 9:42:08 PM

[flagged]

by gizajob

5/3/2026 at 9:58:02 PM

This is not X or 4chan mister.

by hsuduebc2

5/4/2026 at 11:40:36 AM

Why are you assuming my gender?

by gizajob

5/3/2026 at 10:02:46 PM

Definitely a comedy-free zone, you’re right.

by gizajob

5/3/2026 at 10:27:43 PM

How would you know? You haven't said anything funny yet.

by stirfish

5/3/2026 at 10:14:42 PM

I am not sure who would find your comment funny. It's just misogyny, bro.

by jrockway

5/4/2026 at 3:21:28 AM

[dead]

by s5300

5/3/2026 at 10:36:26 PM

[flagged]

by gizajob

5/4/2026 at 5:15:59 AM

You need to be banned from this site. If not this site then this world. jesus.

by threethirtytwo

5/4/2026 at 2:28:11 AM

I mean. What other reaction would you expect?

by hsuduebc2

4/29/2026 at 1:40:15 PM

@y1n0 any chance that I can get in contact with you to help build my own?

I'm already up to several thousand in spend doing it the traditional way (which has been very helpful!) but it's not sustainable even on an upcoming big-tech salary.

thanks <3 hazel

by nixyhazel

5/3/2026 at 10:18:31 PM

I'm a rather hairy man and I literally don't even want to imagine the pain of going through this hair-by-hair.

I also don't see the aesthetics behind it, but I guess that's the hetero guy speaking.

Is this something that M2F trans people typically do?

Is it really this expensive? OP mentions hundreds of thousands of dollars.

by holistio

5/3/2026 at 10:31:56 PM

I'm a trans woman who's had a lot of electrolysis. Almost all of us get permanent hair removal on our face if we can afford it. Laser is far cheaper and quicker, but not everyone can get it since it needs specific hair and skin colour combinations.

Electrolysis on my face and neck has cost me tens of thousands. Think $100 per hour, and it taking 100-300 hours to complete typically. Full body hair removal would easily run in to hundreds of thousands, but very few people will be able to afford that.

I also don't see the aesthetics behind it, but I guess that's the hetero guy speaking.

Women are expected to not have beards, and having one or any beard shadow will get you seen as "a man" very quickly. It's both for safety, and reducing the amount of dysphoria we experience.

(edited for formatting)

by kategorybee

5/3/2026 at 11:09:13 PM

Thanks for the clear answer!

I looked at the arm hair in the video, than at my grizzly arms and totally forgot about facial hair!

That sounds super expensive, isn't there a trend to do that abroad?

I remember seeing Istanbul airport full of hair transplant patients, apparently people go there to have more hair at an affordable cost, maybe the opposite is also available at less than $100/h?

by holistio

5/3/2026 at 11:19:53 PM

Electrolysis is something that needs to be done roughly every 6 weeks, as hairs regrow. Each hair can need multiple treatments to fully kill off, too. There's probably some countries where you can hop over the border to get it done cheaper as a day trip, but I doubt most people will be able to do such a long trip every few months.

There's cheaper places than where I go, for sure, but operator skill is a big part of electrolysis. It's the difference between getting scarred or not, and it's the difference of a hundred hours time spent because the operator wasn't using enough power.

The reality is that it's just time intensive, and there's not many good experienced operators around where I live

by kategorybee

5/3/2026 at 10:35:24 PM

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I was hung up on the arm hair.

by stirfish

5/4/2026 at 1:32:36 PM

FWIW, as a trans woman, I assumed that was for demonstration purposes to avoid showing anything intimate or identifying. Though some of us do remove essentially all hair south of the eyes.

by delecti

5/3/2026 at 10:51:39 PM

Thicker and longer arm hair is still a masculine trait. Testosterone thickens hair all over your body. Feminising HRT does revert body hair for some people (but not facial hair, it's a biological quirk), but usually not enough to where cis women are if you started out hairy

by kategorybee

5/3/2026 at 10:50:15 PM

Also a hairy man. I got a small amount done about 20 years ago because I didn't want to end up with "old man ear hair" like my relatives (TMI, sorry).

At the time, a visit was $60. It wasn't painful but I did feel a twinge/shock for each hair. Multiple visits are required because of how follicles work - they grow hair in phases. The technician would treat the ones she saw, but then I had to wait until the next growth phase to return for her to get the next batch. About 10 trips in all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_growth#Growth_cycle

by chiph

5/3/2026 at 11:10:11 PM

The ear hairs just started appearing a few years ago, I don't like them either, I might actually also get them removed.

by holistio

5/4/2026 at 2:52:29 AM

Yeah, every decade it seems it's a new horror. Nostrils, then ears…

by JKCalhoun

5/3/2026 at 10:24:26 PM

Yeah, I tend to think of body hair as an adult trait, not a masculine trait. Aesthetically I see this kind of like a badass custom tattoo gun, where the tattoo is your own skin without the parts you don't like.

by stirfish

5/3/2026 at 10:29:04 PM

I think she meant that going to a place to get it done for the whole body costs that much. It still sounds expensive, but who knows.

Though, I have no idea who would want to sit through something that takes ten seconds per body hair. I got a light hair removal device and it's waaaaaaaay faster and cheaper.

by stavros

5/3/2026 at 11:12:32 PM

[flagged]

by artifach

5/3/2026 at 11:25:35 PM

You didn't need to make an account just to write that, because you are not welcome here.

by stirfish

5/3/2026 at 11:39:13 PM

“Hetero” isn’t the word you’re looking for, buddy.

by UqWBcuFx6NV4r

5/3/2026 at 10:26:53 PM

Step 2, put the needle on a gantry (I suspect you'd need more like 5D CNC to enter the pore with the right angle) and seek and destroy hairs... As it is it saves money but not time nor skill...

by brohee

5/3/2026 at 8:40:07 PM

I did not get all the transgender references in the comments but gemini found it without issues.

Nonetheless, great thing to have this. You can have a great default 'shave', can get rid of your ear hair, the hair on your toe nails.

I need this

by AntiUSAbah

5/3/2026 at 10:02:58 PM

The hair on your toe nails??

by stirfish

5/4/2026 at 7:03:47 AM

Ah no, sry on my toes behind my toe nails :D

by AntiUSAbah

5/4/2026 at 5:36:28 AM

Very good work. I will try and build my own from your instructions when I can afford to. Thank you so much for making this open.

by slj

4/29/2026 at 7:42:25 AM

Well done. Next project DIY IPL for those hair bears amongst us?

by langfo

5/3/2026 at 8:16:00 PM

In general, experimenting at home with these kinds of light intensities is NOT a good idea. Way too much risk of accidental eye damage.

by cyberax

5/3/2026 at 9:13:08 PM

https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-i-got-my-laser-eye...

A fun related story about how even nominally professionals need adult oversight when working with high powered lasers.

by jaggederest

5/4/2026 at 1:16:59 PM

Yeah, late one day in the lab, tired, aligning lasers, I used a mirror to check alignment because I knew I shouldn't put my eye in the path - so, like a complete, overtired idiot, I put the path in my eye instead.

And thought, Hey, that wasn't very smart! And Wow! I am (temporarily) blind.

It wasn't an eye-threat-level laser. Thankfully. Which is why one wears bandgap glasses when working with those: it's SO easy to mess up!

by IAmBroom

5/3/2026 at 9:43:57 PM

Holy shit what a story. JFC

by NetOpWibby

5/3/2026 at 10:07:44 PM

lol, nice to know that I can go blind just randomly while working on the street.

I'm kinda curious what was sum of the damage in the end.

by hsuduebc2

5/4/2026 at 6:41:31 AM

With high-powered lasers, you can go blind instantly. I also worked with lasers (in a lab, with all the safety precautions), yet I have slight eye damage in one eye.

There's a small burnt patch on my fovea, so if I look at something like a regular grid (e.g. a page with text) with the damaged eye, the grid becomes warped at the point of focus. And I found out about that only when I was doing a regular planned eye exam (I was wearing corrective glasses).

This type of damage is extremely common with lasers, and it can stay invisible and compound until the brain runs out of its ability to do fixes in post-processing.

by cyberax

5/4/2026 at 12:36:06 PM

Wow. As my only experience with lasers is playing with laser pointer I suppose the laser damage of this type is mostly by multiple reflections that are not really even seen by visible eye or scattered beam reflected from some surface you are not expecting it from?

by hsuduebc2

5/3/2026 at 8:58:53 PM

Finally, directed energy weapons for trans people.

by Kye

4/29/2026 at 1:35:33 PM

This is very impressive... The temptation to build my own now...

by rie_t

5/3/2026 at 8:12:02 PM

Excellent hack, lovely write up. Learned about Embassy, which I didn't know yet. Thank you!

by sho_hn

5/4/2026 at 2:29:34 AM

This is so interesting, thanks for sharing!

by achr2

5/4/2026 at 3:12:58 AM

One thing eludes me... We have thousands of hair follicles, how is that supposed to work in a finite amount of time?

by RicoElectrico

5/4/2026 at 7:09:10 AM

One step at a time? Quick back of the envelope: Assuming 30k body hair follicles, at 5s/follicle that's 42 hours.

Now if you just want to do your arms this is like down to a few hours. Not so bad?

by croemer

5/4/2026 at 9:05:26 AM

Say it takes 10 minutes to shave a beard, and you have to shave it every 3 days, in one month, that's 100 minutes. In 10 months, that's 1,000 minutes. Two years gets you 2,400 minutes, or 40 hours. And that's just a beard. Spending 42 hours to get it done once seems like a great deal on comparison!

by fragmede

4/30/2026 at 2:04:13 PM

…it's basically a medical device designed by an idiot…

That cracked me up!

by magic-amoeba

5/3/2026 at 11:42:09 PM

designed, but never tested

by nulltrace

5/3/2026 at 10:21:50 PM

I am equal parts terrified and amazed by this. Well done, fantastic.

by stavros

5/3/2026 at 7:29:41 PM

Very cool! How can I order one?

by electriclove

5/3/2026 at 8:13:04 PM

Tindie is great for this type of stuff, if OP needs a platform. Though my experience is only as a buyer.

That said, if you have a 3D printer these days the process of ordering a board with full PCBA from PCBWay/JLCPCB/Aisler and printing the case yourself is pretty easy.

by sho_hn

5/4/2026 at 4:24:26 AM

Damn. This went from car battery style electrocution to custom PCB design unexpectedly quick.

Kudos, amazing design.

by cookiengineer

4/29/2026 at 10:30:11 AM

Cool

by mininao

4/29/2026 at 10:51:08 AM

Hell yeah this rules

by oompydoompy74

5/3/2026 at 8:23:22 PM

[dead]

by brbnode

5/4/2026 at 3:13:42 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

4/29/2026 at 9:21:53 AM

[dead]

by junglistguy

4/29/2026 at 8:50:43 PM

[flagged]

by ermmm

4/29/2026 at 9:02:00 PM

This account was made solely to leave this comment, for what that’s worth to the non-bad-faith users on here.

by danielmeskin

4/29/2026 at 10:47:30 PM

[flagged]

by ermmm

4/30/2026 at 12:39:18 PM

Yep! I don’t comment unless I have something useful to add to the conversation.

by danielmeskin

4/30/2026 at 3:24:04 PM

[flagged]

by ermmm

5/3/2026 at 7:51:39 PM

Nah, calling out morons and assholes is always useful

by estimator7292

5/3/2026 at 11:34:06 PM

based

by cassonmars

5/3/2026 at 8:21:54 PM

based

by a_t48