Fisher & Paykel SmartLoad Lint Receptacle

[gansky1]

Well, I'll respond! I had not seen these pics before now, you mentioned in the washer posting. I saw this machine at a spring home show here in town and was playing with the lint collector - there was only a small amout of dust and fluff in the model they had plugged in for demonstration. Have you figured out how the lint gets in there - a separator/diverter of some sort? I would be interested to see the machine's guts, but you don't have to disassemble it just for that ;-) Where are the heating elements in this dryer?

Good pics - unless you had mentioned your hands, I never would have looked - they look fine BTW!

 

[DADoES]

The lint bucket is located at the left side of the drum. This 'sidewall' of the drum does not rotate, thus the collection bucket is always in an upright position. The dryness sensor bars are below the bucket. Notice the larger hole at the left toward the bottom of the grill. There's a matching hole on the other side. I'm guessing they're for mounting the optional drying rack.

I've had the dryer since 10/8/2004, and have not yet dumped the collection bucket. That's at least 12 loads of collected lint, and there's room for more.

(Ewwwww! Why does my hand look mottled in the first picture, and fat in the second picture??)

 

[DADoES]

SmartLoad Drum Closing/Opening

Howdy, Greg. I don't know (yet!) exactly how the lint scraper works. I can say that there are two openings at either side at the top of the lint receptacle's bay. The heating elements are at the right side of the drum -- like at the back of a GE. Airflow, I assume, is from right to left, out through the grille at the left side. The grille itself and the lint receptacle are stationary. There's a scraper arm or mechanism of some ilk that wipes the lint off when it reaches 1/8" accumulation (I read that specific figure somewhere) and I'm guessing it simply drops into the collector.

The drum is belt-driven. The belt is wrapped around the extreme right side. The motor is reversible, of course, and variable speed. Reverse tumble may be a touch slower than forward tumble, but the speed otherwise does not appear to vary *during* tumbling. The motor does rev-up slowly when the drum gets started in either direction, it doesn't fire-up instantly to full speed. It also runs at a slower speed when indexing the drum for the unlocking procedure.

By way of a minor disassembly I offer the two video clips below.

The drum lid is opened or closed by way of a latching mechanism that spams the full width of the drum, operated by a separate electric motor. The mechanism is largely concealed behind the top-deck / loading port, but there is a small finger latch at the front left of the loading port for use in opening the drum during a power failure. Power is required to rotate the drum for opening, which of course cannot occur during a power failure. The outer lid requires power to lock, so automatically unlocks during a power failure. The user can hold down the finger latch and manually rotate the drum forward to engage the lid latching mechanism in order to remove clothes during a power failure. There are a couple stickers on the outer surface of the drum to remind of how to do this.

Drum-Close.avi (1.75 MB)

Drum-Open.avi (1.46 MB)

 

[coldspot66]

Went to a F&P service seminar a few weeks ago to see the top load dryer. The lint screen is mounted around the lip of the drum much like a Delrin ring on a W/P dryer. There is a scraper assy the contacts the screen as it tumbles and deposits the lint into the receptacle. Very ingenious idea.

 

[foraloysius]

Great videos, they explain more than a thousand words. It looks they made a very ingenious opening and closing system. The sounds are also very different from normal dryers, more technical I think. I think F&P is doing some nice innovating on laundry appliances. I almost feel guilty that I spoiled their fun by telling them this was not the world's first toploading dryer...

 

[pulsator]

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW! THAT IS SO COOL!!! I NEED one! No dryer can compare to that! It almost sounds like a jet!

 

[gansky1]

Thanks for the vids, Glenn! That is super cool to see that opening and closing with "her top off" like that. As Louis said, the video said more than 1000 words - I'll bet most of the sales people have never seen that.

Love the sounds too - reminds me of the blower on the Harmony dryer, ramping up to speed.

 

[Brent-Aucoin]

Very cool Glen!

Thank so much for your videos of your dryer!
That is so impressive.
How fast does the drum rotate? It seemed faster than most dryers.
Also, do you have pictures of your new washer also?
Your description of your set sounds so impressive.
What did you do with your other set that you had?
Brent

 

[kenmore1978]

lint collector

scrapers=friction=wear

 

[DADoES]

I don't think it makes constant contact with the screen. Lint supposedly is cleared off each time it reaches 1/8" thickness.

CR finally added F&P to their reliability rating, and interestingly, they're near the bottom. That doesn't bear-out on my experience with my GWL08 and DE04, which have passed five years with no repairs or trouble. They were both standing in 12" to 14" of water for about 8 hours during the November floods, and are running prefectly fine.

 

[foraloysius]

Hmm, did anyone notice this thread was started at the 32nd of October?

 

[Designgeek]

Hey, I have a friend whose birthday is the 32nd of October

Re. the scraper and wear: If the scraper is positioned 1/8" off the surface, that's even more clever.

You can't easily scrap a very thin layer of lint from a screen, but as soon as it reached about 1/8" depth, it comes off easily, all the way down to the bare screen, without touching the bare screen. All you have to do is catch the top of the layer and the rest of it pulls off easily in a nice clump or sheet. Think of pulling the cheese off a piece of pizza (not that you'd actually do that, of course!).

So you don't get continuous wear on the surfaces, just intermittent wear that's no different than if you'd used your fingers.

Dadoes, I get the audio from your clips but not the video. Reading the stuff on a Macintosh, OSX 10.3.5, using Quicktime to view movies. Any suggestions?

 

[DADoES]

Hmm. Sorry, I don't have any specific suggestions. I don't know anything about Macs, but does your Quicktime perhaps not have the correct codecs for the video clips? Can more codecs be installed/added/updated to it? I only use Quicktime (Windows version) for clips that won't run on Media Player or Real Player.

Maybe run the clips on a friend's Windows machine?