Bit of a Hero'ism

[j.m@talk]

Taking a holistic approach to engineering and design
The whole process of invention, research, design and development is tough.
As James Dyson, the man whose entrepreneurial flair and design skills have made him one of the UK's most successful businessman, says: "It is a frustrating business, but you just have to battle on. The problems you are trying to solve are very difficult to solve and the whole establishment is against you - nobody likes change."

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James Dyson

Dyson's fame and fortune has been built on the the business of cleaning up. After 10 years in business, Dyson Limited's product range remains limited to vacuum cleaners and washing machines, albeit with output running at millions of units per year. Having 'reinvented' the vacuum cleaner, Dyson has now turned his attention to electric motors with the Dyson digital motor.
Recently however, the company has been the subject of negative press in the UK after its decision to move manufacturing to Malaysia. James Dyson says: "Europe is almost the most expensive place in the world to manufacture anything. The lower labour cost in Malaysia is important but, having moved our manufacturing there, quality has gone up enormously."
Of the 1200 employees in the UK facility, about 350 are graduate or post-graduate engineers and scientists, all of whom benefit from James Dyson acting as their mentor. Qualities he looks for are: "Dogged determination, a questioning nature and an unconventional outlook."
This year it is possible that a robot vacuum cleaner will be launched by Dyson. This is not the first time that this type of cleaner has been available from Dyson, but the earlier DC06 robot model was priced significantly higher than a conventional vacuum cleaner.
Dyson has always made a heavy investment in research, design and development. For example, the environmentally-controlled pick-up chamber cost around E290000 and is used to test Dyson machines and competitor products. To develop the Dyson Digital Motor has cost around E11.7million over a seven-year period, and a team of 15 has been working full-time for several years to develop the robot cleaner. With such a busy research, design and development department, the company has an in-house intellectual property department. This handles annual patent renewals E1.1million every year, patent applications, design registrations and lawsuits against competitors who are seen to be infringing Dyson patents or registered designs.
Dyson holds strong views on the patent system: "I believe that patent renewal fees are an infringement of human rights. They are also, essentially, anti-competitive in that large companies can afford to pay but small companies or individuals cannot. I'm glad to say that the UK has halved the cost of renewals following our earlier campaign, but patent offices in other European countries have not; they do not want to loose their income or power."
So far Dyson has taken two cases to the European Court of Human Rights. Both have been rejected on the grounds that patent renewal fees are 'reasonable', even though the fees are not related to the patent owner's ability to pay. Nonetheless, Dyson does not shy away from patenting his company's inventions. "Patents are essential to encourage creativity and genuine innovation."

Design philosophy

Clearly there has to be something special about a company that can be this innovative in mature markets. The Dyson design process is therefore the same as the Dyson design philosophy. Engineering and design are not viewed as separate; the holistic approach means that there are no barriers between the disciplines of designing, engineering, model-making, testing and machining.
"The best and most creative products evolve as part of a design process, in which the technology on the inside informs the way the product looks on the outside," comments Dyson. "Product development is an empirical process, with testing and retesting, making one small change at a time, at its root."
Working from a design specification, initial ideas are sketched in notebooks. Surprisingly, corrugated cardboard then plays a major role. This material is cheap, easy to cut and glue, and the corrugations allow single-curvature shapes to be formed. In addition, the cardboard thickness is similar to that of components moulded in plastic, so realistic models and mechanisms can be created that can be handled, allowing design details to be resolved at an early stage. To keep a record of design evolution, models tend to be remade rather than modified.
After the cardboard models come 'breadboard' models that enable initial testing to be performed so that ergonomics and performance can be assessed. Breadboard models are constructed from a variety of materials that might include components from current products, plastics, metals and some rapid prototyped components built either in-house or by a bureau.
CAD is generally left until as late as possible because creating designs on-screen is not as fast as sketching and modelmaking. However, CAD models are essential if other computer-based tools such as CFD (computational fluid dynamics) are to be used. CAD also enables rapid prototyping to be employed. In the final stages of the rigorous design process, foam models are used for visual and ergonomic fine-tuning. Dyson says: "There is a world of difference between having a good idea and making it work successfully. Having bright ideas is crucial, of course, but it is just the start of the process of making a successful product. Being able to stay focused on a problem, and to stay focused for days, even years, is critical."
Once pre-production mouldings are available, assembled products are put through final mechanical, acoustic and pick-up tests and are taken away by Dyson employees for use in their own homes. That is where the inspiration for the Dyson vacuum cleaners and washing machines came from. In both cases Dyson had been frustrated by what he saw as the poor products available on the market and had realised that the innovative application of technology could make radical improvements to the products' performance and bring benefits to customers.
Dyson declines to say what other new products were in development, or what else in his home is frustrating him and will provide inspiration to innovation.

[Steve R Jones]

I saw him on a TV show recently. Pretty smart man.

[j.m@talk]

Almost all domestic vacuum cleaners utilise an ac series wound electric motor to spin the fan that generates suction and airflow.

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Smaller and cleaner electric
motor spins at 100000rpm

This has remained the case for decades, even though this type of motor has significant drawbacks.
First among these is the combination of carbon brushes and commutator that wears and leads to motor failures.
Furthermore, the carbon dust tends to be exhausted to atmosphere, acting as a potentially harmful pollutant. In addition, because of the speed at which the typical motor runs - in the order of 35000 rpm - the fan is of a relatively large diameter and inefficient. As well as leading to unnecessary wastage of energy, the motor and fan combination is also noisy.
Dyson's engineers recognised that the scope to make further improvements to the AC series wound motor was limited, so decided to take a step back and develop a better alternative. Seven years and £8million (E11.7million) later, a production line has been established in Singapore, less than 10km from the company's manufacturing plant in Malaysia, to produce motors that will be used in future Dyson vacuum cleaners.
With annual production running at 2 million vacuum cleaners per year, the motor production facility may well reach similar output levels in the future.
Economies of scale will also benefit from the fact that only two models of motor are required to cope with all mains electricity voltages around the world, which is a significant improvement over the present situation. Once volume production is underway, the cost of the motor and controller will be closer to the cost of a conventional motor, though the increased complexity inevitably means that the cost will be higher initially.
Life expectancy for a conventional vacuum cleaner motor is only around 500 - 600 hours and the intention was to develop a motor with double the life. This meant eliminating the commutator and brushes, which led the engineers to investigate switched reluctance (SR) motors.
These feature a rotor without coils and a stator with two sets of coils that are switched so as to alternately attract the poles on the stator (Fig. 1). Because of the asymmetric design of the rotor poles and the momentum of the rotor, the rotor turns rather than oscillating.
In the Dyson design, referred to as the Dyson digital motor (DDM), the rotor consists of a stack of iron laminations and the stator windings are wound on iron laminations that give only minimal clearance with the rotor so as to maximise efficiency. An opto-electronic switch senses the position of a flag on the rotor so as to provide the positional information required for the control electronics to switch the stator phases with the correct timing.

Faster and smaller

Because there are no contacting components, the motor is able to run at 100000 rpm, which is much faster than conventional motors. The advantage of a faster motor is that the fan can be made smaller and more efficient.
Dysons's engineers started by looking at turbo impellers from automotive turbochargers and the current design is certainly similar in concept. However, to perform reliably at such speeds, the fan is moulded from PEEK, which is remarkably tough (Fig. 2). Thanks to the more efficient design, a 1500W Dyson digital motor generates 400AW (airwatts) as opposed to 300AW for a comparable conventional motor.
High speeds require specialist bearings and, with nothing suitable available off-the-shelf, Dyson worked with a German bearing company to develop special ball bearings. These have steel balls and races, with cages moulded from PEEK.
Another issue resulting from the exceptionally high speed is that the rotor runs super-critically, that is to say, above its resonant frequency.
In order to reach this speed without resonance causing damage to the rotor, stator or bearings, the motor has to accelerate past the critical speed so that the critical speed is only experienced for three to four revolutions (patent-pending anti-vibration bearing mounts are also incorporated).
Needless to say, to achieve this level of control requires some sophisticated electronics. In addition to ramping up the speed of the motor so as to reduce in-rush currents, the electronics must ensure that the critical speed is passed quickly.
But once a device incorporates electronics, there is scope to add more functionality. For example, Dyson vacuum cleaners only require infrequent filter changes, which are easily forgotten by most owners; as the filter starts to block, this can be sensed and the electronics can signal that the filter needs changing.

Onboard memory

Dyson is also planning to store data on the onboard memory, such as the motor's serial number, build date and information relating to usage and operation.
Going a step further, this data can be transmitted back to the company's service facility by telephone to enable problems to be diagnosed remotely.
While the main consumer benefits will be seen as smaller, lighter, better performing products, the digital technology could also enable other innovations relating to customer service.
For instance, warranty terms could relate to running hours rather than the length of time elapsed since purchase.

Noise cancellation

So far the motor has been developed purely for use in Dyson's own vacuum cleaners, with the stator being overmoulded and the fan and ducting being designed as part of the same assembly.
Included in the fan ducting are two Helmholtz resonators that act as noise cancellation devices to eliminate the peaks that detract from the noise quality.
These, coupled with the fact that the motor spins faster and the noise peaks are narrower, mean that the motor and fan is quieter than a conventional motor and fan and the noise quality is improved (though noise quality is always subjective).
But despite the specialist nature of this development, Dyson has already received enquiries from other organisations interested in high-speed motors with no wearing parts.
Aerospace companies have expressed an interest and it is possible that licences to use the technology - much of which has patents pending - could be issued.
Dyson is claiming that the motor will last 1000hours, or twice as long as a conventional alternative, but life tests have been terminated after 2000 hours because the test rigs are required for more motors.
We are told that we can expect to see products being launched with the new motor possibly in 2004, and it will be interesting to watch where future developments take this concept - and whether Dyson decides to develop its own motors for other domestic appliances.

[j.m@talk]

I saw him on a TV show recently. Pretty smart man.

I taught him all he knows ;)

:t

[Lgbpop]

Big, fat, hairy deal.

My Oreck vacuum cleaner still cleans better than my daughter's bagless Dyson that cost three times as much. :t

[herosrest]

QUOTE=j.m@talk]I taught him all he knows ;)

:t[/QUOTE]

Trouble is that the product sucks.

[j.m@talk]

Trouble is that the product sucks.

I gots two ........ Theys brill ....... Ya gotta keep the airways clear tho

The problems start to arise wen peeps suck damp stuff up ...... They don't like damp stuff

DC01 & DC03 Yey :t

[Lgbpop]

Trouble is that the product sucks.I thought that was the intent. Of course, the product could suck and blow at the same time.

[j.m@talk]

Just replaced the brush bar in me DC03 today....... Dang Tootin' I'm a enjuneer :rolleyes:

[leprechaun_40]

Vacuums suck ;)

[j.m@talk]

http://www.t-shirthumor.com/Merchant2/graphics/fullsize/skbl_lg.gif...

[leprechaun_40]

Yeah, that's it. :D

[j.m@talk]

I'm lernin' :t

[j.m@talk]

Jeebers..... 1.5Kw electric motor ........ He recons its "Quite powerfull" ....... So would my motorised can opener be if it was linked to a Chevy V8 :rolleyes:

100,000 Rpm fer Th'oover is somome what going a wee bit too far me finks :eek:

[herosrest]

Fried gearboxes, epileptic starter motors, diabolical radiators and now an emphysemic engine. Who knows… Freddy the No Directions tour bus may or may not have been cursed from the start, but instead of boring you with mechanical tragedies, we'll start on a positive note!
http://www.doubleentendre.com.au/myspace/postersmall.JPG (http://www.heatseeker.com.au/gigs.aspx?id=Double%20Entendre%20&%20Jeff%20Strong&tid=2&iid=1280)

[mireland]

:rolleyes: