Evolution of H-Axis Washing Machines From Semi to Fully Automatic

[niclonnic]

Really good history lesson!

This inspired me to post about a former player in the FL washer industry: Dyson. Apart from vacuum cleaners, they had a short-lived washing machine known as the "Contrarotator." It was exclusive to the UK and came in two major models: CR01 and CR02. Since I'm American, I had to do some research on it.

One day, Dyson engineers found a startling discovery about doing laundry: hand-washing for 15 minutes removed more dirt than 1-2 hours in a conventional machine. This led to the development of the Contrarotator. Released in late 2000, the new washer featured two drums that simultaneously turn in opposite directions. This manipulates and flexes the laundry in a three-dimensional way, mimicking the action of hand washing which in turn leads to cleaner clothes. Dyson's motto was "Two-drum, not humdrum."

Unfortunately, this design came with drawbacks. For one, due to the inherent nature of the dual-drum design, the machine had to be overengineered. It was essentially two washing machines in one, featuring two of every major component: motors, clutches and drive belts, along with a gearbox to control the drums. This made the CR too expensive and unprofitable for the company. So it was reluctantly discontinued in the mid-2000s.

The second was reliability. Apparently, these things broke down much more quickly than a standard washer, all thanks to the aformentioned overly complex engineering. Does the wash action tangle laundry?

Here's a video about the rise and fall of the CR. I'm curious, what would have happened if Dyson remained in the washing machine business?

 

[me]

Dyson's modus operandi always seems to be to come up with something he can patent, so noone can copy, and use marketing to convince people it is better. His machine got a fair amount of publicity from BBC's Tomorrow's World as I recall, showing the unique wash action of the prototype.

The Dyson contrarotator actually had two drum motors, but only the one belt, which was driven by both! It also had two doors, two door lock, two aluminium spiders, a clutch locking plate system driven by a small motor to switch between locked together drums and counterrotation, which I believe used planetary gears fixed to the plate. And there was an outer drum with two inner half drums; one presumably attached to the outer and the other driven by the secondary inner spider, so lots of places for grime and moisture to potentially get trapped, which may be one of the reasons the inner spider was reputedly prone to corrode and fail. Must have weighed a ton! I don't believe there was much difference between the CR01 and 02, from what I read the major changes was, he redesigned the coin trap, some extra buttons and programme options and they added a reminder to run a regular maintenance cycle to the firmware, and toned the colour schemes down a bit.

A working contrarotator, that still does its trick



Here's a video showing the innards, with the aid of a club hammer.



The Titan, another quirky UK machine, came out a while after the dyson was released, but I believe stayed on the market for an even shorter period, I only ever saw it once in a single store. That had a tilted removable plastic drum which doubled as a wash basket, and if I recall correctly, pumped the wash water through the centre of the drum shaft so it sprayed water over the load from holes in the lift arms.

 

[foraloysius]

A small chapter in this history is for V-Zug that introduced automatic washing in Switzerland with the V-Zug Unimatic Favorit. This machine was mainly found in communal laundry rooms.