It seems fair to say that Dyson sits at the intersection of impressive engineering and borderline ridiculous products. The Dyson Airblade 9KJ hand dryer that [ElectrArc240] recently took to bits would definitely seem to fall under the latter, combining an incredible amount of engineering all for the simple task of drying wet hands.
These hand dryers are rated for a cool 900 Watts, with an 0.5 W standby power consumption, though you can also switch it to a 650 W ‘eco mode’ when installing it. The air that gets sucked into the dryer first passes through a HEPA filter before it hits the heating element and then gets blown out of the handles onto one’s hands.
Both of these handles come with a presence sensor in the form of an ST VL53L3CX time-of-flight sensor, along with a path for the heated air towards the thin slits. Returning to the section just past the HEPA filter is the compressor, with a rather fancy airflow path that involves various stacked meshes. As can be seen in the video, where you’d expect basically a simple blower motor or so, there is a truly astounding amount of parts as the teardown progresses.
The motor disassembly is the first part where some desoldering and breaking of glue bonds is really necessary, but it gives full access to the driver board. The circuit used here is your typical IGBT-based driver, though with a mystery PIC MCU to do things. Following this the tear-down turns fully destructive, giving access to the motor internals.
Following an analysis of these internals we marvel at the carbon-fiber rotor that keeps the single magnet in one piece. This is another engineering choice that serves to justify the 1,000 quid price tag. All so that rest room visitors do not have to suffer the humility of using paper towels.
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