EEVblog #132 - Delusional Dyson Marketing

Dave cuts loose on the dickhead marketing team at Dyson.
Of course it's got zero carbon emissions!

[keira_churchill]

No carbon dust means none getting onto the floor and being trod all round the house, so maybe they can say it produces zero carbon footprints too. :)

[Borednesss]

A pencil has more 'carbon emissions' than the carbon brushes on a regular electric motor... lol

[Greegor]

A better sales point about no carbon brushes
is that they won't wear down and need to be replaced.

Is the RPM claim true?
Does it make a lot more suction?

[rich]

People really are that stupid. I was denial for 30 years, but they have convinced me.

[jeriellsworth]

I'd rather have the carbon sequestered in my brushes.

[exponentmantissa]

Reminds me of the time we had a major product recall and mktg asked me to come up with a fancy name for the recall program. I called it the Corrective Recall Action Program. I was already on the off ramp but I am sure that sped up my demise from the company.

[spacepirateivynova]

I've seen about a dozen dysons in the last year from friends, every one of them broken. Usually something stupid or cheaply made, wires too small at too high a current, burnt out connections, that sort of thing.

[fedos]

My brother is a proud wage slave for Kirby. So much BS goes into selling vacuums. Most of it relatively benign, like this carbon emissions statement, but some of it is potentially harmful. For example, as part of his sales pitch my brother tells people to vacuum the inside of their computers every 3 months.

[MegaWayneD]

"It's marketing wank!" - I nearly spat my drink all over the keyboard when you said that! By the way, go to any waste disposal centre in England and I guarantee there'll be more Dysons than any other brand of vacuum cleaner in the household electricals section. That's definitely not carbon neutral!

[_a.z]

Believe it or not, they actually make vacuum cleaners that neatly put all the mess into a bag that only costs a few pence and you don't have a dust storm around your bin when you empty it. And you don't need a degree in engineering to assemble/disassemble and clean the filter and all the fiddly bits!
Bagless vacuum cleaners are an absolute joke and a con, apart from the health dangers when you empty them! .. (Into a bag? )
I remember when we bought our first brand new (bagged) vacuum cleaner, over 20 years ago, very cheap and incredibly effective without all the hype and over inflated price tag!
There's too much BS around, thanks for pointing this out!
I suspect most of Dyson'r success comes from public sympathy for his "under-dog" beginnings, when he took grain separator technology that was around then and put it in a vacuum cleaner. But didn't he make over 5000 initial prototypes to get the first one working properly? What does that tell you? Hmmm...

[vaporainwaves]

This just doesn't stop cracking me up after all those years. It's hard to believe 2010 was 8 years ago.

[jonathanpeden]

James "Wank Speak" Dyson used to manufacture his vacuum cleaners in Wales.  But when his products began to take off he closed the Welsh factory and moved production to the Far East (as seen from the UK).  All of those jobs lost so he could boost his profits and get a knighthood from Her Maj.  All of his marketing is the same, he uses the same wank as Apple.

Maybe Dave could instigate 'Take Down Thursday' because that was a great take down of Dyson.

P.s. my own vacuum cleaner is an Electrolux cyclone cleaner - it has lasted ten years so far and the suction is still amazing.  Carbon dust be damned!

[joshmaday]

No teardown to check out the digital motor?

[pmgodfrey]

It could be worse with "zero carbon emission TECHNOLOGY"!

I was at a big box tool store one time and saw some flooring with "real wood technology" on the box. WTF does that mean!?

I agree...marketing tries too hard -- but then again...fancy words and phrases sell products. I'm only impressed if it's blue or shiny and has blinky LED's -- it's good for my ADHD.

[fardellp]

With the Dyson brand in general I have to laugh at their "suction plots". These show a straight horizontal line for the Dyson (indicating no loss of suction over time) with a traditional vacuum cleaner which has a line dropping to near zero over the same time period. What they don't show is the fact that the Dyson STARTS half way down the suction curve for a traditional cleaner - which is for half the time (approx.) more powerful.

[Dibblah]

For reference, the motors are probably switched reluctance motors - If you're looking for a search term. Not new - The whole thing is marketing. Pretty much like Dysons in general - Cyclonic collection has been used for a very long time. That said, I have a Dyson because it is truely a good product at a reasonable price.

[Sdnaurs]

Another dyson lie is the so called 'Digital motor' - I'm sorry motors are inherently linear devices.

[MrSwanley]

To me "digital motor" means that there's a microprocessor maintaining the speed under varying loads. I have a metalworking lathe and a woodworking router which both have that feature.

[davida.]

Dyson has developed gone to 104, 000rpm brushless DC technology to combine efficiency and manufacturability in its latest handheld vacuum cleaner.
“Because it is two pole, it is very simple, and when you make it run at high speed, you can make it incredibly small, ” Dyson’s Andy Clothier told Electronics Weekly. “It is 84% efficient, which is high at this small size. At this voltage and power level, to get a brushed motor this efficient is very difficult. Our old motor was 40% efficient.”
Overall the motor, dubbed DDM (Dyson digital motor) V2, is 55.8mm in diameter and weighs 139g.
Notoriously tricky to start predictably, the motor uses asymmetric poles. “You have to have enough saliency on the poles to make it start in the right direction, ” said Clothier.
With brushless motors, there is a choice: sensored or sensorless – incorporate a magnetic sensor have tell the electronics when to switch coil polarity, or use a more powerful processor and sense rotor position from back-EMF.
“The way we designed it was to integrate the electronics into the motor. It is the least expensive way of doing it, ” said Clothier. “The PCB is in exactly the right place to carry a Hall sensor.”
Control comes from a simple 8-bit Microchip microcontroller, not one that has special motor control peripherals, said Clothier: “We used our own motor control technology. To get the absolute best, we make sure the motor produces constant power regardless of speed and the battery voltage.”
The power control is largely open loop – determined from detailed knowledge of the motor and impeller dynamics, combined with motor speed derived from the Hall sensor. Up to 3, 300 adjustment per second are made.
The battery is either six or four lithium ion cells depending on the vacuum cleaner model: DC31 (pictured) or DC30 respectively.
Up to 10A at 20V, and up to 13A when the battery voltage drops, is switched into the motor by an H-bridge of mosfets.
To get current to change direction fast enough with such a low supply voltage requires low-inductance windings – in this case twin coils wound in parallel.
The whole motor, and its mechanical and air environment, was modelled extensively.
“That is where most of the work went in: we developed our own simulation tools to model the whole motor including its electronics, ” said Clothier. “We also used some commercial finite element software for spot checks and detailed work, but 90% was designed by our own software.”
Modelling, for example, showed the sintered neodymium permanent magnet rotor was small enough not need a carbon fibre sleeve to stop it flying apart at full speed.
“This is the kind of thing that looks simple and needs a lot of work, ” Mathew Childe told Electronics Weekly. “We modelled the motor dynamics and made sure it was stable against vibration right up through its acceleration range, checked the acoustic noise and checked the resonances.”
The team also built prototypes that were tested using accelerometers and laser displacement instruments, then fed-back the results. “All the way through, you learn to improve and adapt the modelling process, ” said Childe.
High rotational speed put means the impeller can be small, but means it is subjected to high forces. “Most people would use aluminium, ” said Childe. “Through simulation we designed out as much stress as possible and so we can make the impeller out of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer.”
A plastic impeller and steel shaft means welding is out of the question. “Everything in the vacuum cleaner is dependent on bonding, ” said Childe. “We have had an engineer working for two years on adhesives for the product.”
The motor has been dubbed DDM (Dyson digital motor) V2.
What was effectively DDM V1 was actually dubbed X020 and is the switched reluctance designed used in the company’s Airblade hand dryer.
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[QuadControl]

So, how well does this vacuum work? Now I need to know!