Product investigation / 2025

Braun M60
Reverse Engineering

I took a pocket shaver apart to understand the decisions hidden inside it: 44 component instances, their materials and manufacturing routes, and the lifecycle cost of putting them together.

Reverse EngineeringProduct TeardownCES EduPackMaterialsManufacturingLifecycle Analysis

SPECIMEN M60 / 01 Braun MobileShave M60 with its protective cover rotated to expose the foil head

Commercial product / Protective cover & foil assembly

44component instances

86.4MJ first-life energy

5.47kg CO₂ footprint

−42.2MJ recovery potential

01 / Object anatomy

One product.
Every decision exposed.

I disassembled the M60 to its smallest serviceable elements, weighed and numbered each part, then grouped the system into housing, power, transmission and cutting functions. The teardown turned an opaque consumer object into an auditable bill of materials.

Complete annotated component teardown of the Braun M60 — Physical teardown / annotated by hand PC · POM · PP · PE · PU · stainless steel

02 / Evidence log

Disassembly as a way of reading.

Fasteners, snap fits, mould marks and wear traces revealed how the product was assembled, where it was designed to flex, and which parts were intended to be replaced rather than repaired.

Flame testing a polymer sample for material identification — 06Flame-test identification

03 / Material + process ledger

The bill of materials became a manufacturing map.

Visual inspection, technician input, flame testing and CES EduPack were combined to avoid treating material identification as guesswork. Each selection was tied back to the performance the part needed and the process that made its geometry economical.

System Material family Primary process Design reading

Outer housingPC / POM / PEInjection mouldingForm, impact resistance, low-volume cost

Foil + cutterStainless steelStamping + rollingHardness, edge retention, corrosion resistance

Drive structureSteel + engineering polymersCasting + mouldingStiffness and controlled motion

Motor + batteriesMixed metals / cellsPurchased assemblies68.6% of material-phase energy

04 / Lifecycle audit

The impact sits upstream.

Granta Eco Audit showed that material production and transport dominate the first life. Use energy is almost negligible, so a credible redesign has to change material choice, mass and recovery rather than optimise the switch or battery runtime.

Materials52.5 MJ

Transport32.0 MJ

Manufacture1.74 MJ

Use + disposal0.16 MJ

Largest material burden

68.6% The motor’s share of material-phase embodied energy.

Lifecycle energy and carbon footprint table from the Granta Eco Audit — First-life Granta Eco Audit / report source data

05 / Redesign direction

A premium redesign, with the trade-off left visible.

The client brief asked for a more industrial and premium product. Ashby screening led to aluminium for the housing and titanium for the blade set, with die casting proposed for production. The result improves tactility, corrosion resistance and recovery potential, but does not pretend that premium metals arrive for free.

Original PC + POM housing

Injection moulded, light, economical and visually translucent.

Proposal Aluminium housing

Die cast for a stiffer, corrosion-resistant and more premium shell.

Original Stainless blade set

Hard, manufacturable and proven for the shaving interface.

Proposal Titanium blade set

Lower density, high corrosion resistance and stronger premium signal.

Ashby chart comparing material hardness and price — Hardness × price

Ashby chart comparing hardness and carbon footprint — Hardness × embodied carbon

Embodied energy

86.4 MJ95.8 MJ

End-of-life recovery potential

42.2 MJ52.0 MJ

The proposal raises first-life energy while also raising recovery potential. I kept that tension visible because responsible design is a decision between competing priorities, not a cleaner-looking number.

Reflection

Reverse engineering taught me to read a product as a chain of connected choices: form implies process, process implies material, and material carries a cost long before the user turns the product on.

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