Why did it take so long for washers to adopt high speed spins?

[sudsmaster]

A simple enough question...

Why did it take so long for electrically powered washing machines to adopt high speed spins to extract water from laundry after washing and rinsing?

For many years the "mangle" or wringer equipped washers were the standard. It took Bendix in 1937 to introduce not only the first fully automatic clothes washer, but also to feature high speed (albeit only 300 rpm) water extraction at the end of the process. But even then it was a front loader, and required firm anchoring in concrete for proper installation. It took perhaps another 20 years for high speed spin water extraction to become the norm rather than the exception for home top loading washing machines.

I confess I am not so familiar with the history of twin tub washing machines, but my sense is that they came quite a while after the wringer washer became popular. And, also, I'm looking for a reason why high speed spin water extraction was not incorporated into the same tub used for washing and rinsing.

Technically it doesn't seem all that difficult. Sure, you need a mechanism to switch from agitation (usually back and forth) to spinning. You also need some sort of system to suspend the tub with springs and sometimes even shock absorbers to allow it to vibrate up to a point due to the imbalances inherent in fabric loads. But none of that seems beyond the capabilities of early 20th century technology.

Is it more a matter of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Millions of housepersons had become accustomed to the ritual of using a wringer washer. Did the whole idea of enclosing the tub, automating the draining and filling and agitation and spinning, seem too futuristic, complex, unreliable? Even given the obvious hazard of hands, hair, and other body parts accidentally getting caught in a powered wringer, causing potential injury?

Even the argument that centrifugal drying washers wasted too much water is moot, since early on, there were "suds saver" models that allowed one to save the wash water from one load to use in the next load.

 

[bajaespuma]

Probably more than you wanted...

American business operate on a philosophy of targeting the lowest common denominator. All you need to do here is to think of Wal Mart. Most people in the US don't give laundry any more thought than absolutely necessary and that's the accommodated demographic. I say this confidently because in my own extended family, there were only two people, my Grandmother and myself, who gave the ergonomics of doing the wash a second thought. To be fair, my Mother liked lots of things ironed, but actually washing and drying clothes were an onerous chore best done by hired help and finished as quickly as possible with a minimum of attention, products and fuss. When it comes to home appliances, most people just don't care.

 

Best example of this: I don't know if you were alive from 1973 to 1975 but the United States of America underwent a dramatic and almost universal change during this period. Most Americans never gave a thought to fuel efficiency in automobiles. Gas was about 47 cents a gallon at the beginning of this period. When the Middle Eastern Oil crisis occured during the early part of the Carter years, gas prices soared. I saw people trading in cherished family cars that could have been described as "boats" for tiny Japanese cars like the first Subarus and Hondas, as well as the established Toyotas and Datsuns. Cars that had been derided in the US for their sizes for years suddenly became hot commodities( with a waiting list) within months. We have long enjoyed the status of being the richest and most wasteful society of the last century. Now we have to pay the price. Now some of us consider things like energy efficiency and "green" practices.

 

That even said, manufacturers like Miele have to "dumb down" their products for the American market. Americans have a habit of buying future tag-sale "drek".

 

Also, to credit to John LeFever, who was defending Whirlpool/Kenmore lame spin speeds one evening, a lot of consumers, especially women, liked the fact that their dresses emerged from those appliances maybe wetter than most, but also mostly free of  spun-in creases  as from the more effective extracting machines. They would iron them later and if they were to be line-dried, it didn't matter that much anyway.

 

Has anyone here scientifically measured the extra drying time required for a load spun at 600 rpm vs. the same load spun at 1200 rpm? I'd be curious to know the number. I'd bet it's a significant figure but I'd also bet it wouldn't add up to more than a hundred dollars a year on average for today's prices. Where my LG saves me more money is that so much laundry comes out of it so dry that I drip-dry much more stuff than I ever did.

 

[launderess]

IIRC one of the draw backs was designing a powerful enough motor able to start then maintain extraction high or low speed. Industrial/commercial laundries long used extractors but there motors or even steam power were no problem.

This would be why early home washing machines most usually always had wringers mounted even when the means of agitation or tumbling was done via a motor.

Then of course as you stated there was the problem of designing suspension systems that would keep a washer (top or front load) stable during any spin cycle.

Given how the higher spin speeds go the greater chances for creasing/wrinkles especially after all that hot water washing and rinsing (when soap ruled), spinning at high speeds may have been more a curse than a blessing.

Housewives and others knew or soon found out that setting a wringer's rollers too close in order to squeeze more water out of textiles produced wrinkles that took ages to iron out, if they came out at all. In the era when most laundry would have been lined dried then ironed one didn't need anymore work.

Given the vast natural resources and historically cheap energy prices most American washing machine makers and users probably thought along the same lines as laundromat washers today; high speed spins weren't required as uber hot dryers would bake the wash dry. The tumbling action would also lessen and or remove wrinkles making ironing un-necessary for many things.

 

[launderess]

High Speed Spins vs Water Retention

Several sources including various techs from Miele have told me once one goes >1200rpms or so for spin speed you start reaching the laws of diminishing returns. You get more water spun at say 1400rpms versus 900rpms, but not much more from 1400rpms vs 1600rpms.

High speed extractions especially long cycles of it are very hard on textiles. It can stretch things out of shape and place fibers under heavy stress. Not to mention as one stated before, creating creases that may never come out even with all the ironing or tumble drying in the world.

 

[arbilab]

They weren't called "mangle" for nothing. How long did it take to put the emergency release on them? Too long, for some fingers.

'High speed' spinners were available as early as 1918, the gasoline-driven Easy twin tub (ref, Lee Maxwell). Clearly superior in safety and results. Why did mangles survive as long as they did?

There's absolutely no rocket science in a slantfront Westinghouse. Why did that take so long to come up with? Timer is the most complex part, but when was Big Ben built? I'm not that good a historian but I can't think of a single 'breakthrough' invention we were waiting for.

 

[sudsmaster]

True, very high speed spins may stress fabrics and cause creasing.

But I wonder what the equivalent rpm of a spin would be if comparable to the average water content of a wringer wrung load of laundry.

I suspect that Bendix arrived at its 300 rpm final spin speed because it extracted just as much water as the average wringer would.

My point is that it just seems so obvious that using the same tub to agitate and spin is so much more efficient than having to yank the wet laundry up to the wringer. Even if the control on a spin equipped washer was fully manual, it would still save labor over a wringer setup.

A follow-up of sorts: We know that the Bendix was the first fully automatic washer, at least in the USA. But it is a front loader. What was the first top loader washer with integral spin drying (not twin tub)?

 

[launderess]

Now One Understands Your Query

This should answer some of your questions:

Washing machine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[swestoyz]

What was the first top loader washer with integral spin dryi

I believe it was the pre-war Blackstone model 50, from 1940.

Ben

 

[launderess]

As The Above Points Out

Washing machine sales didn't really take off until electric power was universal in a country. Without a steady supply of power you cannot have motors that provide spin cycles. However you can use motors powered by petrol to provide the means of agitation.

Also as pointed out until domestic water supplies especially of hot water became common and inexpensive a housewife/laundress may not have wanted to discard all that hot water after just one wash load. Suds saving washers didn't come along until when? So even an electrical powered wringer or separate extractor as with twin tubs allowed one to shift laundry without loosing wash water.

 

[chestermikeuk]

What was the first top loader washer with integral spin dryi

I would say the Savage washer & spinner, washer & spinner in one tub and just by changing the position of the drum gives you the spinnning action.

Many wringers produced so much pressure that by multiple passes and / or folding the clothes quite a lot of excess water can be pressed out, we did a crude experiment with cotton towels last year and the electric powered wringer matched around 500rpm on the front loader ...

One reason it took so long for front loaders to gain spin speed was purely the need for good suspension so the machines wouldnt shake themselves to bits, and what you didnt know about you didnt miss, our grans where used to the manual mangles, when later electric power wringers came along they where more efficient, then the stand alone spin dryer, now that did make the difference spinning at 2,800rpm, then incorporating it with a wash tub to form a twintub...later when the first early autos came out, the slight difference of less water extracted was traded for a fully automatic machine.....my mums first washer spinning at 850rpm was great but you only notice the difference now as we have access to the 1600rpm machines over double the speed....its all relevant!!

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I found some answers in the Consumer Reports articles in the archives here.

It would appear that the Maytag wringer washer could remove 25% more water from the laundry than the Bendix did with its spin cycle.

Later automatics like the Westinghouse Laundromat, Blackstone, and Launderall had water removal rates in the same general ballpark as the Bendix, with the Bendix highest at 51% water retention, and the Blackstone best at 45% water retention. The Maytag Wringer, with 25% better water removal than the Bendix, would have about 39% water retention, better than all the automatics tested in 1948. In due course, of course, automatic washers featured faster spin speeds. I figure 500 or more rpm would have put the automatics on a par with the wringers for water removal, and of course the GM Frigidaire and other fast spinners took that up to 1,000 rpm and faster (1140 for the GM).

 

[launderess]

Extraction via Wringers

Translates into about 220 to maybe as high as 300 or so spin extraction speed.

However to get that much water removed one may have to pass laundry through several times tightening the rollers after each sucessive run. Or, simply make the wringers as tight as possible the first time, but that could lead to all other sorts of problems.

 

[sudsmaster]

The 40's era Consumer Reports articles go on and on about the safety issues with powered wringers. They say the wringers cause many injuries and even deaths, and from what I read in the archives, none of them really had a fail safe release mechanism that would make them, in my words, fool proof. Even the top rated Maytag wringer machine had an engagement handle that could pinch fingers.

It's against this backdrop that CR aggressively sought to review the new spinner dryer and automatic washers. They were honest enough to admit that most of the early automatics couldn't equal the best wringers in cleaning efficiency, but in time they recognized that increasing numbers of them could.

It's also interesting to read about the lower than average cleaning efficiency of the early automatic front loaders, or what CR called tumble washers with side loading. At one point CR admitted that a problem with the front loaders was getting the amount of soap or detergent right, to have enough to clean but not so much as to cause excessive foaming. They say they tried a "no suds" detergent but found the results were even worse (of course, you need SOME surfactant for washing to be efficient). Perhaps the detergents of the day simply were not appropriate for front loaders. Another factor was probably the relatively short tumbling times for the front loaders... as compared to the most efficient modern front loaders, which use significantly longer wash times for best results. For example, the Miele 1918 takes nearly two hours to run a regular load with no presoak.

 

[philr]

My grandmother told me a few times about her mother having a spinning washer when she was a kid. Knowing that my grandma was born in 1921 and that her mother died in 1938, she probably had it since the early thirties. I don't know which brand it was or it's spin speed. My grandma's first washer was a wringer in the late 1940's.

 

[arbilab]

Of course, we have to keep in mind that RPM is not the holy grail. It's Gs, or gravitational units. Which are a factor of drum diameter.

Hypothetically, the greater the diameter, the greater the force at the same speed. Yet my Panasonic twintub @~1-foot diameter and 1700 RPM was twice as effective extracting as my Frigiwhite @~3-foot diameter and 800RPM, roughly 3x the diameter and half the speed but half the effectiveness. In a warm (Hawaii) climate I could take shirts out of the Panasonic and wear them, they would be dry within minutes. Or take towels out and use them.

Any physicists can explain that?

 

[easyspindry]

I don't pretend to be . . .

. . . an expert on the mechanical workings of washing machines. But it seems to me that one of the reasons for the lower spin speed for so long in washing machines was the fact that most all of them were belt drive machines. The GM Frigidaire was a direct drive machine that would spin as fast as the motor turned. There was no transmission to deal with.

And then I would imagine there were patents on these mechanisms that prevented other manufacturers from using the various mechanisms much like the Bendix patent on the "shock absorber" type of suspension in the combination machines that prevented other brands from having a successful washer/dryer.

Just my thoughts . . .

Jerry Gay

 

[combo52]

EARLY WASHER DESIGNS

As Ken so correctly pointed out I don,t think most uses cared about clothes coming out of a washer almost dry. Two washer makers built thier first machines to spin at 1140 RPMS, GE and Frigidare and these both did so without being bolted down to the floor. But neither one of these designs were the top selling brands at the time.

 

Suds-savers on TL washers were first sold by WP & KM and they were standard on the early machines [ you could op-out of getting it if you wanted ] This feature became very popular with many consumers and every other builder of TL washers had to offer SSs eventually if they wanted to even have a chance of getting a sale to many consumers. Sadly CRs never embraced this money saving feature, even though thier own testing could find [ no loss of cleaning effectiveness reusing the water up four times ].

 

If you bought a new LK washer in 1964 for $300.00 and paid the extra $10.00 for the SS option you would save enough money in the average 10 year life of the washer to make the washer FREE. Imagine for a second that if there was a option on a new car that cost 10% of the cars initial cost that returned the entire cost of the automobile over its normal life, I bet a lot of people would buy it. Buying a Gas dryer over an electric dryer { if you have natural gas } also will pay back the complete cost of the appliance and installation easily over its life span. 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Also higher spin speeds need higher quality bearings and suspension components. It was not a question of the motor needing to go faster, but the components being adequate to the stresses. WP-built machines clearly were not made with any intention being fast spinners.

As for the early front loaders's washing ability, part of that poor performance was the very small diameter of the drum not allowing room for the load to tumble. The drums were initially small to make the distribution for the spinning as easy and as even as possible. When CU tested combos, they remarked that the larger drum sizes led to better washing performance and for them that was like swallowing poison because they did not like tumbler washers and probably did more to turn people away from tumbler washers than any other single factor in tumbler washers' long struggle for acceptance in the US. In fact in 1954, when the Duomatic was included in their huge report on washers and dryers, the Duomatic, as a washer, ranked right below the Whirlpool in washing ability. In 1964, CU rated the flat-front side-swing door Westinghouse as average in washing ability when tested with the top loaders.

One night in the 80s, when we were replacing the tub bearings on a Westinghouse FL, I looked at the drum sitting on the shop floor and it was very comparable in size to a shallow tub Maytag or even the 12 lb GE tub, especially when you took away the part of the TL tub above the fill line. So the WH had the space and did not need the agitator to handle the same load easily yet used less water. As years pass, I am more and more cogizant of the amount of water used by top loaders. I have drained water from one washer to another to do two washes with one fill. I have pumped the rinse water out on the yard and sometimes still do tha twith rinse water from the FLs, but the water extraction always meant something to me because I had used Unimatic Frigidaires and even if I washed heavy towels in my Kenmore combo, I always spun them in a top loader, whether it was a Frgidaire or even a Maytag, to spin out more water before letting them go into the dry cycle.

 

[sudsmaster]

I'll submit that bearings equal to the task of high speed spins were readily available by the 1930's, if not sooner, due to the need for such bearings in the front wheels of automobiles. Sealing the bearings from attack by alkaline wash water is probably another matter, and we all know that rubber compounds improved greatly after WWII.

Similarly for springs and shock absorbers... these were all available in the 1930's due to their use in the automotive industry, albeit larger than needed for a home washing machine.

I agree that CR seems to have had a bias against tumble washers from the start. They grudgingly lauded the ease of use of the first Bendix automatic, but then failed to heed the advice of Bendix and do hot washes at 160F. They complained about oversudsing with the commonly used soaps and synthetic detergents of the day, but instead of trying to find a low sudsing detergent, they went for a NO sudsing detergent (what was it? pure washing soda?) with predictably poor results.

Anyway, I'll be interested in doing my own washing efficiency testing with the '41 Bendix Deluxe once it's restored. With modern HE detergents, STPP, and really hot water (if my water heater doesn't explode).

As for the drum size on the Bendix... it seems to me, at first glance, that it's more a case of it being a bit shallow rather than too small in diameter. But when I measured it, it turns out the Bendix wash cylinder is an inch larger in diameter than the standard Miele (1918A) drum, and an inch deeper than the Miele drum as well.