The science · Tap Pen
The device is a depth system, not a speed setting.
A technical record of the re:tones Skin Rejuvenation Tap Pen Device: what is specified, how each figure is stated, and what has not been measured.
Specifications · formulations · provenance
Units and conventions
- Concentration
- Stated in ppm and as percent by weight. 10,000 ppm = 1%.
- Length
- Needle diameter in micrometers (µm). Depth in millimeters (mm). 1 mm = 1,000 µm.
- What a concentration is
- The amount present in the sealed vial. It is not a statement about how much crosses the barrier.
- Mass figures
- Where a mass in grams is given it assumes a density of about 1 g/mL. The manufacturer has not published a density, so every mass here is an estimate from volume.
Two independent controls
Depth and rate are set separately, and conflating them is the most common misreading of an absorption device. The collar sets how far the needle travels. The intensity setting sets how often. Neither moves the other.
Distance and frequency are not the same axis.
Depth and rate, drawn apart
The device is specified at 6,000 RPM, which is one full pass every 10 ms. The window below holds ten of them.
One seat, two geometries
Three cartridges ship in the box: two PRO-5D Nano and one PRO-R Nano. They are different jobs, not a ranking. Both seat on the same device and both travel the same range.
The two cartridge plates
Plan and elevation. The needle count per array is not published, so the pattern indicates an arrangement rather than a count.
Coupled, not sequential
The ampoule is released from the cartridge at the moment the needle meets skin. That is one movement. Needling first and applying afterwards is two.
The formula and the road arrive together.
Where the ampoule enters
A section through the device nose, the cartridge and the ampoule reservoir. The internal geometry is schematic.
The neck behind the tip
The ampoule does not sit in a chamber and wait. It passes a neck on the way out.
The manufacturer's engineering document specifies a 50 µm orifice inside the cartridge, set 0.8 mm behind the needle tip. Every dose crosses it.
A neck that narrow meters the release. What leaves the tip is set by the geometry, not by how much you poured into your hand.
It also drops the pressure of the fluid as it accelerates through. A pressure drop across a constriction cools what passes it.
The dose is metered by geometry, not by your hand.
The document states that drop as 2.3 °C at the tip. It is a figure about the fluid, stated by the people who built the part.
It is not a figure about your skin. re:tones has measured neither one, and the row stays open in the ledger below.
The document goes on from there into what the cooling does on a face. This page stops at the fluid.
The cartridge nose
- Orifice
- 50 µm, inside the cartridge, 0.8 mm behind the needle tip
- What it does
- Every dose passes it, and the geometry meters what comes out
- Fluid velocity
- Stated to rise from 0.3 to 4.2 m/s through the neck
- Pressure
- Stated to fall from 101 kPa to 89 kPa across it
- Temperature at the tip
- Stated to fall by 2.3 °C. A figure about the fluid, not about skin
- Verification
- The neck geometry is stated to be checked on a scanning electron microscope for every production batch
- Basis
- Manufacturer's engineering document. Calculated and bench figures, not a third party test
- Measured by re:tones
- None of it. Nothing in this table is our measurement
- What it does not state
- Nothing about how a session feels, and nothing about skin after one
8 µm is a manufacturing problem
A needle diameter is easy to print and hard to hold. The figure is a manufacturing outcome before it is a specification.
Molded polymer needles have a floor. The same document puts it at about 70 to 100 µm, below which molding stops holding a consistent tip.
So the array is not molded. It is made the way semiconductor parts are made.
Photolithography, then deep reactive ion etching, in an ISO Class 5 cleanroom. Verification is by scanning electron microscope, in house.
Below about 70 µm, molding stops being the method.
The document also states how the diameter was chosen. A finite element study covered 14 diameters, from 3 µm to 120 µm, across more than 200 geometries.
The bottom of that range has a mechanical limit. Below about 5 µm the needle buckles under the force needed to enter.
The document gives a reason for the top of the range too. That reason is about sensation, and sensation is a Not claimed row here, so it is not repeated as one.
None of this is a result. A fabrication method says how a part is made and nothing else, and it is graded that way in the ledger below.
How the array is made
- Method
- MEMS fabrication. Photolithography, then deep reactive ion etching
- Why not molding
- Molded polymer needles are stated to hold about 70 to 100 µm at their finest. 8 µm is below that floor
- Cleanroom
- ISO Class 5
- Verification
- Scanning electron microscope, in house at the manufacturer
- Needle surface
- Amorphous silicon nitride, about 120 nm thick, stated to ±5 nm
- How the surface is applied
- Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition
- What is under the surface
- Not stated. The document names the surface and not the material beneath it
- How the diameter was chosen
- A finite element study across 14 diameters, from 3 µm to 120 µm, and more than 200 geometries
- Lower limit
- Below about 5 µm the needle buckles at the force needed to enter
- Basis
- Manufacturer's engineering document, covering work dated 2024 to 2026. Not verified by re:tones
The cutting edge, in three facets
A tip is not one angle. The document specifies three, ground in sequence behind the point.
Angles as stated in the manufacturer's engineering document, ground on a five axis machine. The same document attaches performance figures to this geometry, measured against products it does not name. Those figures are not printed here. This site prints a comparison only where the other side's own published specification can be named.
Bench conditions
- Instrument
- Instron 5943 micro tester, 5 N load cell
- What was measured
- The force to insert one needle
- Figure
- 0.008 N per needle
- Calculated alongside
- 0.038 N compressive strength per needle, which the document states as a buckling margin of 4.75 times
- Substrate
- Not stated in the document
- Provenance
- Bench work at the manufacturer. re:tones did not operate the instrument
- What it does not state
- Nothing about how a session feels. A force on a bench is not a sensation
Device specification
- Platform
- re:tones 5D Nano-Needle Array / TDDS Platform
- Needle diameter, PRO-5D Nano
- 8 µm
- Needle diameter, PRO-R Nano
- 15 µm
- Needle fabrication
- MEMS. Photolithography and deep reactive ion etching, not molding
- Needle surface
- Amorphous silicon nitride, about 120 nm, applied by vapor deposition
- Depth range
- 0.5 to 1.5 mm, continuously adjustable
- Depth control
- Collar dial, no clicks
- Intensity
- Six settings, separate from depth
- Stroke rate
- 6,000 RPM, which is 100 passes per second
- Cartridges included
- Three. Two PRO-5D Nano, one PRO-R Nano
- Cartridge life
- Sterile, single use
- Cartridge nose
- A 50 µm neck, 0.8 mm behind the tip, that every dose passes
- Battery life
- About 3 hours of use per charge
- Charging time
- About 1.5 hours
- Cadence
- Once a week
- Classification
- Cosmetic device
- Model as certified
- INSKIN-M1
- Made in
- South Korea, to re:tones specification
- Origin
- Made in South Korea. Sold by Idenbrick LLC, United States
- Compliance documents
- Four. FCC, CE for EMC, RoHS, and a Korean self-declaration. Numbers below
- Not published
- Needle count per array, battery capacity in mAh, weight, and the material under the needle surface
Micrograph conditions
- Instrument
- Scanning electron microscope
- Accelerating voltage
- 5 kV
- Vacuum mode
- High vacuum
- Scale
- The plate the manufacturer supplied carries the instrument's own 10 µm bar. Measured against that bar, that plate's frame is about 58 µm across. The view printed here is a closer one of the same array and carries no bar of its own
- Magnification
- Not published. The figure printed on the supplied plate does not agree with that plate's own scale bar, so we did not carry it over. A magnification is only true at one reproduction size, and this frame is resized by your browser. A scale bar stays true at any size, which is why the scale above is given as a field width
- Specimen
- PRO-5D Nano array as supplied. No conductive coating was applied for imaging, and the image has not been retouched beyond cropping and resizing for the web
- Provenance
- Plate supplied by the manufacturer, and the copy we hold is a low-resolution crop, which is why the field width above is given as an approximation. re:tones did not operate the instrument.
What the engineering document holds and we did not print
- A study on people
- The document includes one, run internally. No figure, endpoint or conclusion from it appears anywhere on this site
- Why not
- It was not a third party study. re:tones did not design it, run it or observe it, and no sentence here rests on it
- Comparisons with other devices
- The document compares its figures against products it does not name. We print a comparison only where the other side's own published specification can be named
- Language about comfort
- The document uses it throughout. Comfort varies by person, depth and area, and it stays a Not claimed row in the ledger below
- Patent status
- The document describes filings. Nothing about patents is printed here until an application number can be printed beside it
- Figures with no method
- Where a figure arrived without a method we could state in one line, it is not on this page
- What we kept
- Construction. Materials, geometry, angles, dimensions, and the process used to make the part
A figure, or nothing
Every figure on this page is a claim, and it is printed with the thing it rests on. 8 µm and 15 µm for the two cartridge geometries. 0.5 to 1.5 mm of collar travel, set by hand rather than chosen from presets. Six intensity settings. 6,000 RPM. Each of those is a device specification, labeled as one, and listed again in the ledger below with its basis beside it.
It is much easier to write a phrase that sounds like a specification than to print one. Surgical grade stainless steel is the type of phrase we mean. It reads like an engineering term and it is not one. It names no alloy, no composition, no supplier and no lot, so nobody can check it and nobody can compare two products by it. It is not on this page, and neither are its relatives.
A figure with its basis attached, or the sentence does not run.
One grade on this page is new, and it is a lower one. The manufacturer's engineering document states how the array is made, what the tip geometry is, and what the cartridge nose does to the fluid. Those are facts about how a part is built, and they are graded as a manufacturer statement rather than as a measurement. That grade sits below a test report and above a phrase, and it is printed as what it is wherever it appears.
The rule costs us as much as it earns. Needle count per array, battery capacity, charge time and weight are not here, because the manufacturer has not supplied them and we are not going to estimate them into existence. The stroke rate at each of the six settings is missing for the same reason. Every one of them is listed under Not published rather than quietly left off, which is where a figure we do not have belongs.
What is absent is as deliberate as what is printed. How long a channel stays open, and how a session feels, are both left out because we have not measured either. This is a standard we set for ourselves rather than a comment on anyone else, and the ledger below marks the edge of it instead of hiding it.
Four documents, and what they cover
Until now this device had no compliance file. It has one now. Four documents, and every number is printed below.
Three were issued by a testing laboratory. The fourth is a declaration we made ourselves, and it is labeled that way wherever it appears.
The documents cover two things. The first is electromagnetic compatibility, which is interference. What the device emits, and what it tolerates.
The second is restricted hazardous substances in the electronics. Lead, mercury, cadmium and the rest, against published limits.
That is the whole scope. Not one of them looked at skin. None measured absorption, depth, needle geometry, or anything on a face.
Four documents on the electronics. None of them on skin.
Three distinctions we will not blur. The FCC document is a Supplier's Declaration of Conformity. That is not an FCC certification, and there is no FCC ID.
The CE declaration is against the EMC Directive. It is not CE medical device marking. This is a cosmetic device.
The Korean document is a self-declaration under the Radio Waves Act. We declared it. No regulator tested it and no regulator signed it.
So none of this is a statement about your skin. Skin contact safety is biocompatibility, and biocompatibility is not in this file.
The file also settles something this site had left vague. The device and the ampoules come from two different manufacturers in South Korea, each building to re:tones specification.
The documents name model INSKIN-M1 and the trade mark inSkin Cell, not re:tones. That is ordinary for a device built to a specification. Both identifiers are printed here, because a certificate number you cannot match to a product proves nothing.
The certificate register
- FCC, United States
- Supplier's Declaration of Conformity RCT202508140304C, against 47 CFR FCC Part 15 Subpart B
- CE, European Union
- Declaration of Conformity RCT202508140301C, against the EMC Directive 2014/30/EU
- CE, standards applied
- EN IEC 55014-1:2021, EN IEC 55014-2:2021, EN IEC 61000-3-2:2019+A1:2021+A2:2024, EN 61000-3-3:2013+A1:2019
- RoHS, restricted substances
- Declaration of Conformity RCT202508140303C
- RoHS, standards applied
- IEC 62321-3-1:2013, 62321-5:2013, 62321-4:2013+AMD1:2017, 62321-6:2015, 62321-7-1:2015, 62321-7-2:2017, 62321-8:2017
- Korea, KC
- Self-declaration of conformity for broadcasting and communications equipment, under Article 58-2 of the Radio Waves Act
- Korea, date and declarer
- 11 July 2025, declared by Idenbrick. Not third-party certification.
- Korea, standards applied
- KS C 9814-1:2022 and KS C 9814-2:2022
- Korea, equipment management number
- INM1-INSKIN-M1
- Product as certified
- Skin revitalization device
- Model as certified
- INSKIN-M1
- Trade mark on the documents
- inSkin Cell
- Made in
- South Korea, to re:tones specification
- Applicant on all four
- Idenbrick, the company behind re:tones. Sold in the United States by Idenbrick LLC.
What these documents do not cover
- Efficacy
- Nothing here measures a result on skin. No absorption, no depth, no time to result.
- Biocompatibility
- Skin contact safety is not in this file. It has not been measured.
- Sterility
- Cartridge sterility is not in this file either.
- Needle geometry
- The 8 µm and 15 µm figures come from the manufacturing specification, not from these documents.
- Medical status
- CE for EMC is not CE medical device marking. This is a cosmetic device.
- FCC status
- A Supplier's Declaration of Conformity is not an FCC certification. There is no FCC ID.
- Korea status
- A self-declaration is our own statement. No regulator tested or signed it.
- Words we do not use
- We do not write safety tested or safety certified. These are emissions and materials documents.
- What compliance means here
- The electronics meet emissions and materials limits. Nothing beyond that is stated.
Evidence grades
- Substantiated
- Traceable to a manufacturing specification, a supplier ingredient statement, or the physical product.
- Manufacturer statement
- Stated in writing by the engineering team that specifies and builds the device. Not a third party test, and not verified by re:tones.
- Reference figure
- A published literature value used for scale, not a re:tones measurement.
- Not published
- The manufacturer has not supplied it. Listed rather than estimated.
- Not claimed
- re:tones has run no consumer panel and no clinical study, so no efficacy percentage and no time to result appears anywhere on this site.
Claims ledger, this device
Every figure this page uses and what it rests on.
Every figure on this page names its own basis.
Back to the science index