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The Motor
Dyson has relentlessly pursued the creation of highly powerful, small and energy efficient motors. During her visit to Dyson’s Malmesbury Campus, Hannah wanted to understand how our vacuums create suction. So, she met with Dr Andy Clothier, Dyson’s Director of Technology, to learn how generations of high-speed Dyson Digital Motors – getting smaller and more efficient over time – have allowed Dyson engineers to create the cordless stick vacuum.
Andy explained that since 2004, Dyson has invested more than £350 million into the development and manufacture of highspeed, efficient motors. We have manufactured more than 145 million Dyson Digital Motors – roughly one every two seconds. And the motor in the Dyson Gen5 Detect cordless vacuum achieves a step change in performance, while being four times faster and 10 times lighter than old-fashioned motors.
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The Cyclone System
After Hannah learned about the tiny, compact motor creating suction, it was time to understand how Dyson vacuums separate and collect debris using cyclonic separation, rather than a bag. For this, Hannah met with James Dyson to understand how he created the bagless vacuum, after seeing cyclonic separation technology at a sawmill.
Frustrated with the lack of suction from his bagged vacuum, James experimented with cyclonic separation to see if it could be applied to the vacuum cleaner, making the bag obsolete. James explained the 5,127-prototype long process it took until he cracked it, demonstrating for Hannah how he made conical shapes with metal for his early prototypes to harness the science of cyclonic separation.
“Do you look back at that time with fond memories?” Hannah asked.
James replied: “The funny thing is when you finish, I’d done my 5,127th prototype, you don’t go and crack a bottle of champagne. You feel as though you’ve slightly lost something– ‘I don’t have that problem to deal with.’”
But James didn’t stop there, and his drive to solve problems with engineering, science and technology continued to grow.
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HEPA Filtration and Dust Science
At Dyson, we make it our mission to know what’s in your dust and the potential impact it can have on our health and wellbeing. Our team of in-house microbiologists study real dust from around the world, analysing particles measuring from 70 microns in size, the width of human hair, right down to 0.1 microns, the size of a virus.
Our household dust labs allow us to investigate the components of real dust, debris and airborne pollutants found in real homes. We even farm our own dust mites, enabling our scientists to collect allergens from them and learn more. Only through this research can Dyson engineers continue to design new vacuum cleaner technologies, to better deal with the conditions they face in the real world.
After using her Dyson Gen5 Detect vacuum at home, Hannah met with Lead Dyson Microbiologist, Dennis Mathews, to understand more about the dust, debris, and to Hannah’s horror dead dust mites had been collected in the HEPA filter from her Gen5 Detect vacuum.
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Materials - Built to last
Vacuums are put through their paces around our homes. They are dropped, bashed and trodden on. To ensure Dyson machines are built to last, our engineers test our products to the extreme to ensure they can withstand the chaos and collisions of cleaning.
Hannah met with Dyson’s Head of Technology Development, Rachael Pink, to demonstrate the durability wand slap and drop tests our floorcare machines are put through – she even dropped the Dyson Gen5 Detect from 3 metres high to see if it could take the impact (the industry standard test requires 1m).
During development, each Dyson product will be dropped onto a hard floor over 5,000 times and cover 1,000km of flooring in push-pull tests. Cumulatively, new vacuum designs will be subjected to 500,000 cleaner head joint swivel tests, charging and discharging batteries up to 6,000 times, and running digital motors for up to 20,000 hours. It takes around 120 Dyson engineers 50,000 hours to be satisfied a product is tough enough, testing to the point of failure.
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Robotics
Hannah concluded her visit with a trip to Dyson’s robotics centre at Hullavington airfield. Here, Dr Mike Aldred and Dr Asma Seddaoui gave the BBC exclusive access to some of Dyson’s most secretive labs, where our roboticists and software engineers are experimenting and researching the future of household robotics.
Hannah saw how the 360-degree vision system on the newly launched Dyson 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum helps the machine to navigate seamlessly around the home. She saw Dyson’s test home lab, a real home setting for Dyson engineers to test their inventions in simulated environments. And she had a glimpse at Dyson’s “beyond-the-floor” robotics research, where Asma demonstrated an early-stage prototype of a robotic arm vacuuming a sofa and picking up household items.
Press contacts
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Dyson Press Office
Email: press.office@dyson.com
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