for sure it is note the air speed that is X 15,
but only the flow

From a consumer POV it is bladeless. The point that a turbine has blades is meaningless to Joe Consumer.

How is this a hack?

What about their vacuums. They advertised for vacuums without ‘suction’, but as far as i know, they did suck the dirt up too, the ‘suction’ was just generated different then on a regular vacuum… I have not see them use the term ‘no suction’ in a while now… Another lie?

Oh, there’s a big clue in the article that I missed. It uses “the same technology at the heart of the Airblade hand-dryer”.

Does anybody know whether those incorporate a traditional bladed turbine?

The notion of “air-amplification” is not new, Dyson just seems to have employe it for a desk fan for various reasons.
See:
http://www.tech-sales.com/Nex_Flow/air_amplifier.htm
While this one is designed to run from compressed air, it claims an increase of 16x so what’s so hard to believe about the Dyson one?
Please: less rabid, more thought.

‘There’s a sucker born every minute” -P.T. Barnum

Actually ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ was a description of P.T. Barnum’s ability. It was a description of him not by him.

SnortSnort Nerd

but…. how in the heck is this a hack, seems more like an engadget article…

I’m imagining sitting at my desk with the Dyson 15x super-fan making my cheeks jiggle from the sheer force of the airflow its generating.

15x!!!!!

My mini-rant in Google Reader this morning as broadcast to a few of my pals: “This isn’t a fan with no blades. It’s a fan with blades hidden in the base that’s attempting to use the Venturi effect to make up for the inefficiency of burying the blades where they are prone to trap allergens and can’t be easily wiped down with a rag.”

Boo hiss, once again, Dyson. You are not at the forefront of any kind of research or technology. You are, and will likely remain a snake-oil salesman that manages to hawk your sleek, over-priced gear via specialty stores full of suckers looking for home gadgets they do not need.

In lieu of a teardown, how about a cutaway?

http://stuff.tv/blogs/cool/archive/2009/10/13/dyson-air-multiplier-am10-bladeless-fan.aspx

I see an airfoil in the ring, but can’t make out much from the motor area. Could it be a diaphragm setup like in small compressors?

There are additional pictures on CNet that show an impeller. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10373251-1.html

Does Dyson actually claim it is bladeless, or was that claim only made by the author at NYDailyNews.com?

I read on Dyson’s site that the fan doesn’t need “fast-spinning blades.” That doesn’t preclude the possibility of the fan having slow-spinning blades. It sounds to me like that is what they have. A slow fan with large blades would be quieter and impart as much energy to the air as a small fast fan. The air’s velocity is then increased by their clever design.

While Dyson’s description might be a tad misleading, I don’t think they told an outright fib.

@peterf1972

They don’t claim they have vacuums without suction, they claim they have vacuums that don’t LOSE suction by getting clogged up with the stuff your vacuuming up.

B.t.w. in the dyson website the call them “fins”.

I am completely fine with them calling it a bladeless fan. I think it’s great that they’ve found a way to move air and make it somewhat safer. Who cares. It looks nice and if it works, great.

Aw come on guys – its a fan, it blows, has no blades (the air for the ‘amplifier’ could be drawn from anythings, compressor, turbine, tesla turbine), basically its a fancy variant of venturi vacuum pump (the one you stick onto a tap, and by running water it sucks, its called an aspirator right?). I like the concept, but marketing guys foobared big, oh and 200 pounds for a fan ?

The breakthrough came when they noticed that accelerating air over a ramp amplified it by 10 – 20 times, drawing in surrounding air through processes known as inducement and entrainment. Hundreds of iterative tests revealed the ideal ramp angle, aperture width and loop amplifier dimensions.

Hahahaha excuse me while I look back at 30 years of air amplifier technology looking almost exactly like dyson’s “fan”.

The 15x figure is about right for an air amp, and it’s a neat use of existing technology, but the dyson page is so full of bullshit you couldn’t clear it with a piss multiplier.

BTW, feeding pressurised propane through an air amplifier nets a high speed mix that is perfectly proportioned for combustion. If you catch my drift.

Forgot… Applicable EU patent documentation:

http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=WO&NR=2009030881A1&KC=A1&FT=D&date=20090312&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

Trying to track down USPTO docs. EU documentation makes the claim: “The fan provides an arrangement producing an air current and a flow of cooling air created without requiring a bladed fan i.e. air flow is created by a bladeless fan.”

Regardless, I can still appreciate the design and wish I did it first (regardless of how well such flow principles are understood)

Dyson might be run by a bunch of carnies, but I own a Dyson Allergy/Animal vacuum and it is seriously the best vacuum I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned a lot of vacuums. It gets used frequently with two cats in the house and it helps immensely with my allergies. Just sayin’ it’s not all bad.

The 3d is deceptive. You can see the spiral oriented pockets “buffets” of air, but what looks like a cylinder full of air is just a thin ring of wind that has less power than bladed fan inside.

I agree, this thing better not be anywhere near as loud as either of my dyson vacuums. They are like freaking jet engines. Even the small handheld Root6 is noisy as heck.

Wonder the power draw on this fan.

@Mr Poo: That would be one sweet flamethrower!

It is irrelevant if the internals use a turbine or a tribe of flatulent gnomes. The end result is moving air without the big, finger chopping, EXPOSED blades. Ergo…bladeless.

Nobody bitches that their “wireless” keyboard actually contains wires on the inside.

grovenstien: I love my Dyson. Haven’t found a vacuum that can deal with pet hair like it can. It will literally suck to the ground and clean rugs leaving no hair behind. (I have the ANIMAL version) Never had a suction issue yet.

The handheld Root 6 also pushes so much air, it works as a great way to start charcoal BBQs :D (even though now when I use it, it smells like BBQ thanks to the filter. But who doesn’t want a BBQ scented vacuum ;)

TJ said, “Nobody bitches that their “wireless” keyboard actually contains wires on the inside.”

QFT! The blades aren’t doing the “amplification”, its the jets and ring.

Why the price of $320? It’s a fan with a specially designed casing, shouldn’t cost more than $50 or so.

My first thought was how well it would propel things through that little vortex. Could make cubicle time more enjoyable if one could lob ping pong balls into it or something and smack people in the head with them at the office.

If you were really bored you could fit a 2-liter bottle or something on it and make an auto-feeder, and servo guided directional control might be nice, along with fire button of course. We could connect it to an old Atari joystick.

I’m not sure how long you’d keep your cubicle assaulting everyone with ping pong balls, but it would be a riot. On that note I’m going back to WoW. =P

“fins have rows of tiny holes to reduce the friction” (Thanks Concino)

Blocked by dust after use…

Although given their background I would have thought they must have considered the effects of dust – manual cleaning?

A. You are talking about the product, good or bad, the marketing worked. Its on awebsite in which it has no reason to be on.

B. Monster Cables! I read further up…don’t get me started on those pieces of junk. I worked for an electrical retailer whilst at Uni, and had a whole days training fromMonster Cables on how to fleece thick consumers and charge £50GBP for a scart lead (don’t get me started on scart leads either!).

Ignoring the irritating marketing aspect of it, would it still work in rectangular form?

I could see this being an amazing thing to build into a window frame in your house. You would get airflow into the house without blocking your view and the turbine could be hidden in the surrounding wall.

Even with this particular model, hanging it upside down from a bracket in front of a window would get you pretty close, albeit for a hefty price.

TJ: “It is irrelevant if the internals use a turbine or a tribe of flatulent gnomes. The end result is moving air without the big, finger chopping, EXPOSED blades. Ergo…bladeless.

Nobody bitches that their “wireless” keyboard actually contains wires on the inside.”

With that line of reasoning you could conclude that a fan-cooled computer is bladeless because you can’t see the fans. Okay, then air conditioners are bladeless too, right?

just put a mac on one end.. since mac’s suck, it would stand to reason that it would gain better air flow with the mac on one side, pushing the air.. the best thing about it is, there would be no need to plug in the mac for the air to flow, since mac’s suck even when when no power is supplied to it…. my apologies to anyone at hackaday who uses macs.

The reason it’s expensive is not because it is marketing, or a “bladeless fan”. It is expensive for the same reason that BMWs, Mercedes, and those kinds of things are expensive; R&D and name brands. The guy says that it took YEARS to do the research and development. They have to get the money back somehow.

or were the 350 engineers used to get the centrifugal turbine drum to work? wtf?
get soupcan
eat soup
cut slots
bend slots into ‘fins’to cause drag
spin can
drag causes air inside to spin too
give air only 1 place to go, through ejector ring.
done

Two comments:

1. Coanda effect anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect

and

http://www.rexresearch.com/coanda/1coanda.htm

Quote from Coanda’s original patent”

“It is an observed fact that when a stream or sheet of fluid issues through a suitable orifice, into another fluid, it will carry along with it a portion of the surrounding fluid, if its velocity is sufficient. In particular, if a sheet of gas at high velocity issues into an atmosphere of another gas of any kind, this will produce, at the point of discharge of the said sheet of gas, a suction effect, thus drawing forward the adjacent gas.”

Dyson is simply exploiting this to drag air into the annular ring. Coanda’s orginal patent (1936) must have run out years ago so time for someone to pick up on the idea again.

2. Mitsubish Jet Towel

Dyson’s previous “invention” was a hand dryer that is a copy of the Mitsubishi Jet Towel that has been around in Japan for at least a decade. Now Dyson’s overpriced copy is turning up around the world as a revolutionary new type of hand dryer.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/5069/dyson-airblade-mitsubishi-jet-towel

Seems like clever marketing and high prices can convince people what’s old is new again.

Just seems like with equal power consumption a bladed fan would be more efficient. Also I don’t recall anyone whining about wind buffetting… Thank god for people who solve problems I didn’t know I had.

He is also solving the problem of me having too much money in my pocket. Doing all of this at the same time. What a nice guy.

Now I could see a use for personal wind tunnel tests but would I pay that much money or just build one if I need a personal wind tunnel?

This is nothing new. Exxair makes material handling “conveyors” that use the same principle (and execution, basically). We were using them 10+years ago! They use compressed air, but the fan inside the “Bladeless” Dyson fan does the same thing.

Just buy an air compressor, some moisture filters and blow that at your chipsets.

Or buy a ulv-cpu and do without all that tomfoolery.

Dyson; solutions to mundane problems that don’t really need solving.

It’d be different if there wasn’t a certain “snake oil” feel to many of their marketing efforts.

Next up a 5 wheeled shopping trolly, the extra wheel prevents drift using a titanium coated rare element bearing adopted from the aero-space industry and is encased in a Teflon sphere to accentuate its existence and make it look like you’re getting something for the money.

Why don’t they use a Tesla-turbine for the impeller? Then it really would be a bladeless fan.

Well, I’m not calling bullshit on this – mostly because it relies on the venturi effect to move air that isn’t moved by the turbine in the base of the unit. In essence, the turbine may only move 1 cubic foot per second, but the venturi effect may in fact cause 10 cubic feet per minute to actually move through the ring.

Look it up.

/me shakes his head.

First off, understand that marketing is all about making a product sound new and exciting to separate it from the other products in its class, mostly by stating that it does the same type of job, only better in some respect, whether by performing a particular function better than the rest, or introducing an altogether new feature. When writing ad copy, Reality and Truth are given a glance now and then, mostly for liability reasons, and, let’s face it, even /American/ judges would be hard pressed to accept a lawsuit over calling it ‘bladeless’.

James Dyson is a marketer, through and through, and, when he describes this new fan as ‘bladeless’, he is talking to consumers that don’t really care /how/ the job gets done, as long as it gets done; there are no big fan blades to be seen, therefore it is ‘bladeless’. Period. End of story, as far as Joe Consumer is concerned. Any engineers or engineer wannabes that cry foul are doing it to a captive audience: themselves. None of the rest of us /care/ if what actually /causes/ 1/16th of the eventual airflow to get moving are called ‘blades’ or ‘fins’ or ‘perforated, aerodynamically curved whosamawhachits’.

What /I/, and most people with a business-like outlook are concerned about, is ‘is it worth the cost in the long run’? I have no problem whatsoever with a high initial cost, if a product is worth it. They mention brushless DC motors, which I know are a fair bit more expensive than the regular kind. It also looks pretty well engineered, which costs a *lot* in terms of hours. It’s also a ‘Dyson’ product, which automatically means a certain percentage in price boost. Fine. I can understand how all of that helps to inflate the price, but what I want to know is more basic:

What is the maximum CFM I can expect?
How does that CFM compare with regular fans of a similar size?
How does that CFM compare with regular fans of a similar cost?
What is the db/CFM profile (i.e. How noisy is it?)
What is the life expectancy?
What are the warranty terms?

Those are the questions that I need answered before I can decide if it is worth the money.

I remember making a thing called the “turbo tube” a.k.a. round Frisbee, 40+ yrs ago. nothing new. The impeller used looks alot like the compressor impellor i have out of a 100+ single stage gas turbine.

then explain all the jet engine maintenance manuals that specify the damage limitations on the “impeller blades”

A mate of mine bought one – he got a refund after three days because the oscillation mechanism decided to grind itself to bits.

yep, expensive rubbish. saw one on display at harvey norman store for 400 AUD. didn’t feel any air multiplication, only price multiplication. i reckon it’s got a 10cm blade fan inside, because that’s what the breeze feels like.
it’s also fairly loud.
am so gonna laugh at any suckers that buy it

A “thrust augmentor” is basically a semi-gear reduction for flowing air.

I used to work for Dyson in 2000 as the Regional Sales Manager for the north of England.

Their products are brilliant, no denying it, but I found that a lot of people would rather save a £100 and buy a Vax :/.

I remedied this and increased sales by 36% by re-training staff to give white lies like this – not big ones, but saying ‘it gives you 30% more suction than a Vax rather than 10%.

Also, Dysons can lose suction because all vacuums do.

Regards,

Jakk – Your fellow Technoholic :D

Dude, White lies? Claiming it increase sucktion 30% when it only increases it 10? That is not a white lie, that is a straight up fraud, and i’m sure 100% illegal.