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It's usually the rubber seal that keeps the water out of the bearing that fails first. I think anything over 1,600 rpm in a washing machine is a bit overkill, as it adds a lot to the cost for minimal benefit, and also increases creasing.

Here's the residual moisture vs spin speed from the service manual covering my 7kg Zanussi branded Electrolux. For what it's worth, it's a 1,400rpm model, which actually spins at 1350rpm measured by its own electronics, and has 6306zz and 6305zz bearings, the inner one seized after 10 years, due to water ingress and I'm pretty sure they'd both still be in good order if the seal around the shaft was able to last longer. Mine rarely last more than 10 years, I suspect the limescale from my very hard water speeds failure up. I think the longest lived was a 1980's hotpoint, it had a weep hole between the bearings so I knew about a year+ in advance that the seal was leaking and its bearings would be on the way out.

View attachment 318279

Some people buy cheap spin dryers which can spin up to about 3,200 RPM to save money on tumble drying, and turn the spin speed down on the washing machine to try to make the bearing last longer.

As I recall the centripetal force depends on the square of the rpm, so rpm makes a more significant difference than drum diameter.

My 1600 RPM (1551 RPM in reality) Zanussi Washer Dryer (ZWD71663W) will be 10 years old in December and seems to be fine, despite me being a heavy user of the dryer. I live in a soft/medium water area, but still descale it about every 6 months, avoid pods/liquid detergent and never wash below 40 degrees Celsius.

Getting back on topic (sorry), it is good that consumers are starting to get more choice, and more efficient/technology advanced machines, but the flip side of that is their higher price, and the extra maintenance burden (i.e., regular cleaning of filters filters, maintenance washers etc).
 
It's usually the rubber seal that keeps the water out of the bearing that fails first. I think anything over 1,600 rpm in a washing machine is a bit overkill, as it adds a lot to the cost for minimal benefit, and also increases creasing.

Here's the residual moisture vs spin speed from the service manual covering my 7kg Zanussi branded Electrolux. For what it's worth, it's a 1,400rpm model, which actually spins at 1350rpm measured by its own electronics, and has 6306zz and 6305zz bearings, the inner one seized after 10 years, due to water ingress and I'm pretty sure they'd both still be in good order if the seal around the shaft was able to last longer. Mine rarely last more than 10 years, I suspect the limescale from my very hard water speeds failure up. I think the longest lived was a 1980's hotpoint, it had a weep hole between the bearings so I knew about a year+ in advance that the seal was leaking and its bearings would be on the way out.

View attachment 318279

Some people buy cheap spin dryers which can spin up to about 3,200 RPM to save money on tumble drying, and turn the spin speed down on the washing machine to try to make the bearing last longer.

As I recall the centripetal force depends on the square of the rpm, so rpm makes a more significant difference than drum diameter.

This is phenomenal stuff. Then you'd have to simply look at the weight of the waterlogged clothes to calculate real-world savings based on RPM vs. poundage or kilogram water extraction vs. tumble drying.

Every pound of water that is extracted from a load via spin instead of resistive heat is very significant. It takes about 400 watt-hours of resistive heat to remove 1lb of water from garments. This chart provides a pretty compelling argument that going from 600 RPM at what probably amounts to 75% humidity down to 53% on 1300 RPM is significant.

There's a reason every laundromat owner at the CLA will tell you to go with high-G, high-RPM front load washers instead of toploads. The bottom line benefits for these modes save a ton of time and money for sure.
 
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