The Very Best Combo Ever In History!!

[jetcone]

NepBob

To answer your question all the patents on Bendix are now public domain so anyone could build a Duomatic today. The funny thing is Neptune blundered in the first few designs because they spent $1Mil in research that they could've easily gotten from the 1939 Bendix Patents! The research Bendix did in the mid 1930's defined what a front loader should be since they invented the Automatic Washer.

When I started collecting and all of your were still shaking rattles , I was very green. I used to come across lots of Bendix machines and turn them down because they were so simple mechanically. The rollermatics intrigued me. Now I realize with hind site that the reason Bendix was so simple was due to the fact that they were the first and so got it right with the easiest mechanical method.

John & I have discussed this a lot, GE made their Combo along with Sears right up to 1970 and quit! If they only had continued another 5 years they would have hit the Condo Boom and those machines would have been SO much better for a Condo than those ridiculous Up/Down things that burp after two pair of pants are loaded in them.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Combos are made today that have suspension systems so they can spin much faster than the Duomatic. Unfortunately, most are tiny things, often Chinese made and the quality of construction is not up to the rigors of every day use for very long before parts start failing. There is a Duet (I think) with a fan that will air dry a light load overnight after washing it so the dream still exists, but if it does not use heat to dry, it is no good for PermaPress items. There is that LG thing, but even in spite of good spinning, it takes forever to dry because it runs on 120 volts. Peter can tell you about his misadventures with that machine. It takes more than a big drum to make a washer a combo. It has to have an efficient method of drying the clothes, disposing of the moisture, managing the lint, etc. Anyway, short answer: yes.

I remember reading about combos in old Which magazines from decades ago and they extracted well, but of course, they were the size of European washers. Probably the United States patent only covered manufacturing combinations with a suspended mechanism here, but there was no importation of washing machines decades ago and the smaller machines would not have been attractive to most families here. Look at the Brobdingnagian drums in modern front loaders compared to the drums in Westinghouse washers from the early 60s until they ceased production which were capable of washing a full 10 lb. load for a family, did not take an hour or more per load and went into spin without dithering around seeking a perfectly distributed load. It is ironic that as families get smaller, the capacity of washers must be larger.

 

[spin-it]

Did the Duomatics have a suspension system or did they also get bolted down? Does anyone know of patent numbers for any combos to be found on Free Patents?

 

[tomturbomatic]

None of the combos had to be bolted down although some were anchored like the Easy's legs which fit in cups to keep it from moving around during the spin and surge rinsing. Actually, I think there were cups for the GE also. The undercounter GE had a different way of being anchored. There were tracks into which the legs fit. Yes, the Duomatics had shock absorbers under the tub which was suspended by springs. Patents prevented any other manufacturer from using them which is why no other combo could do a decent job of extracting water.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Neptune

Jon, when Maytag first started advertising the Neptune, they made it sound like they had invented the horizontal axis washer. Maybe they really did not do historical research, ignored the Bendix/AVCO patents and just started off cold. The odd thing to me was that Maytag actually sold a tumbler washer in the 20s, I believe, that was a style popular at the time and sold by several manufacturers. It looked like a white tank on legs to bring it to work height and had a flat cover that doubled as a work surface. Inside was a perforated cylinder with an opening on the side for loading and unloading. A power-wringer could be mounted at one end. I saw this in a poster at Lanham Maytag, a dealership where John worked for a number of years.

One grievous mistake they made in designing the Neptune was suspending the mechanism from 4 springs, but only supporting it with two shock absorbers mounted at the middle of the tub underneath. From watching the machine operate with the back removed, it was easy to see how an unbalanced load caused the tub to pivot on the two shocks and fishtail from side to side. 4 shocks would have eliminated this motion. Their engineering was abysmal. The Duomatic also used two shocks, but the tub was not slanted and only in the rarest of situations did the tub wiggle like the Neptune's and only in the low speed spin. It disappeared entirely when the spin speed shifted to high. Because of the electronic speed sensor feedback, the Maytag could not shift to high speed spin until the load was sufficiently evenly distributed so that the tub stopped fishtailing.

 

[jetcone]

Yes TOM

And not only did they ignore the design of the Bendix, they also ignored the construction that Bendix discovered.  Bendix found there is a certain optimal gap ratio between the outer tub and inner tub that allows washing currents to carry away dirt and soil. Maytag ignored this and got the outer tub as close to the inner tub as possible to save water. That created all kinds of problems not the least the mold problem.

 

 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Maybe they were just trying to copy their top loader design for tub clearance. Didn't Maytag sales literature feature the paperclip test to show the comparative space between the inner and outer tubs and tout that they had the closest space in the industry? Back to FLs, the lack of adequate space and a good sump like Bendix and Westinghouse machines had, coupled with their powerful pumps, is also the reason that modern FLs sudslock so easily, that and refusing to use the water for the Assured Rinse flush spray after the wash drain. Penny wise and pound foolish.

For those not familiar, you open the end of a paper clip, stick it through one of the drain holes in the side of the tub and note the distance before it struck the outer tub. With the perforated tub GEs, it was like sticking it into a black hole. What Maytag did not tell customers, however, was that most other brands with perforated tubs used a recirculating water lint filtration system so that the water was drawn from that space and reintroduced into the tub. If you will remember the Sears ad when they first came out with the Dual Action agitator, the GE, with its FilterFlo recirculating water system, came in a surprising second best at cleaning the folded, soiled bibs in the packed load test, the only case other than coffee brewing where the trickle down principle worked.

 

[combo52]

MORE THOUGHTS ON COMBOS

Other US combos used hydraulic shocks as dampers in thier suspension systems, the 1957-? Hotpoint's and the all the SQ Combos 1961-? and of course all WH slant front washers from 1959-1963. So it would be interesting to see if Bendix really had a patent on this or whether they paid royalties to Bendix [ calling Mr patent expert Jon are you there ].

 

The last WP built KM combos were made in the fall of 1971 and the last GEs were made in late spring of 1972 I have machines from these dates.

 

On rinsing I am sure that having a fast spin between the wash and various rinses will do a better job of rinsing overall. But having had a GE and KM combo in my laundry arsenal for over 30 years I can say they rinse just fine, I seldom if ever feel the need to add an extra rinse. There at least too schools about rinsing and I have always subscribed to the idea not to over rinse. Detergents have properties that protect the clothing and the washer and unless you have perfectly soft mineral free water as you keep rinsing the last of the detergent out you are leaving mineral deposits in your clothing and washer. These deposits can make your clothing dual and gray and less soft, the mineral deposits destroy water pump and main seals in the washer and harm every other part of the washer that water touches. There is certainly no one correct answer for the amount of rinsing necessary in any given wash load, but in general the appliance manufactures knew what they were doing.

 

I still believe the best ever US built combo is the 29" WP built machines as they were the only one that got a nice large capacity machine into the space of a regular washer. But it is a little unfair to compare a great 1950s machine to a 2nd generation 1960s machine. It would be like comparing the best car of the 1950s to the best car from the 1960s. The 1960s car would win on many important areas not the least of which would be durability. I would be the first to call the original 36" 1952-1958 Duomatics one of the 10 best laundry appliances ever made. I would also include the 29" WP built combos, the original bolt down Bendix washers, the WP BD washers 1947-1987, the MT helical drive machines 1956-2006, the WP DD washers 1982-2011, the GE FF washers 1961-1995 and the Frigidare 1-18s 1970-1980. To me these are some of the most significant designs that made laundry history.

 

[tomturbomatic]

John, since you bring up the 1957 Hotpoint LY-1 combo which spun at 365 rpm, we should disclose to newer members that all models were recalled by the manufacturer under very suspicious circumstances with owners being told, according to a posting by a member here whose father worked for Hotpoint, that the machines were a fire hazard. We collectively figured it had more to do with patent trouble than safety.

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo!

I had saved some pictures from past posts of I think the 1957 Hotpoint combo. I thought it was the same animal as the GE combo. Is that assumption wrong?

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo

next

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo!

3rd!

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo

4th

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo

last

 

[maytagbear]

Did the Kenmore badged combination have

the same "Filter-Stream" jet that the Whirlpool combination had?

I find combinations to be interesting, but I don't think I would want one, even if they were still made, and performed at the level of the best of (let's say) 80s machines.

I so totally love the Whirlpool combination ad with the dacshund.

Thanks in advance,

Lawrence/Maytagbear

(edited for a spelling error.)[this post was last edited: 5/16/2011-18:52]

 

[retromania]

Whoo all....

Made combo washer/dryers? Did all the major mfgr's get in on it?

 

[tomturbomatic]

The original Hotpoint combo was nothing like the GE combo. In later years the HP and the GE were the same combo. The HP combo was sold via the builders program for apartments and condos where all of the kitchen appliances were Hotpoint.

Yes, since the Kenmore was built by Whirlpool they had the same wash and dry action. In the 33" wide original combos, the water sprayed UP from the 7 o'clock position while the tub turned counter-clockwise. In the 29" combo, the drum was not as wide, but it was deeper front to back and the Roto Spray nozzle was at the 2 o'clock position and the tub turned clockwise.

Have you ever heard of a Kelvinator, Hamilton, Frigidaire, Wizard, Blackstone, ABC, Coronado, Co-op, Dexter, Firestone, Thor, Zenith or Woman's Friend combo? They did not make them. There were 11 brands, some made by one company and sold under two names. Then there was that gas frankencombo marketed under a few names including One Minute and Automatic and O'Keefe & Merritt (as seen one season on the Donna Reed Show) that did not spin dry at all. After the last rinse drained a 100,000 BTU burner came on and took the load from dripping wet to dry. Its ad angle was that it did not wrinkle the clothes by spinning. Many furnaces in houses are not 100,000 BTUs. Regular gas water heaters are around 40,000 BTUs. I would not be surprised if it had to be vented through double walled pipe like a furnace flue.

 

[jetcone]

John on the patents for tub suspension

Bendix used the Gyromatic patent for the Combo, which was filed sometime around 1943-1949. So the earliest it would have run out would have been 1960 and the latest 1966. So whoever used shocks (ie Westinghouse used damper plates and springs) paid a royalty for it. Westinghouse actually paid Bendix $125,000 in 1939 ( almost $3 mil today) to use the flush drain rinse feature so they worked very hard to get around the shock absorbers and succeeded. 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Jon, was the flush drain feature the tumbling spray rinse with the drain open? I often wondered if Westinghouse's various rinse sequences were an effort to avoid the Bendix formula of flush, spin, deep rinse, spin deep rinse & final spin. Even through their last configuration with the American made timer, it was like the Bendix rinsing sequence but skipped the spin between the two deep rinses. The rinsing of the last version of this machine with the Italian components with the wash followed by the spray rinse that went directly into a deep rinse followed by a spin, then two more deep rinses with a spin in between was the most complete, if you adjusted up the water level.

 

[jetcone]

Yes Tom

it was the flush with the drain open so the machine could be washed out before the rinse. Westinghouse had a devil of a time with suds (as I am sure you are aware) especially in the days of washing soap, pre-detergents. They had to throw in the towel so to speak in 1939 in the development phase otherwise they could have never competed in the market place. I am thinking of assembling all these documents on a Wiki-page or Facebook page on the history of Automatic washers. That way everybody can share it.

 

Jet