Rolls_rapide
They certanly could design a suspension that could handle softer flooring, but they decidetly don't.
There are basicly 3 typse of washer I encountered on that subject: Those that transfer forces to the floor, those the dicipate forces within their structure, and those that dicipate forces mostly through dampers.
All following conclusions were made under the pretens that the machine is perfectly level.
If the machine isn't level, the whole story gets another level of issues:
In a FL, during spin, the only direct forces that can occur are forces in a 90° angle to the axial rotation center.
The only sidewards motion (coaxial movement) that could be created would be through a momentum due to the location of the loads across the tubs width, but these issues are extremly rare and I only ever encountered them on a theoretical basis. I guess that most drums are rigid enough so that a momentum can't really be introduced.
If the machine and thus the tub and its achsel is 100% horizontal, all forces created during the spin can only be in a 90° angle to that, so, vertical.
If they aren't level, the forces go slightly angled instead of perfectly up and down. This would mean that if we would divide this force into all its partial forces in the 3 dimensions of space, there would be forces going in all 3 dimensions, not just 2.
Thus, the machine could slowly nudge itself across the floor, not only up and down, which makes these force equations somewhat pointless as the system couldn't be seen as static anymore then.
Anyway, besides the point:
A) Machine designed to rely on its dampers:
In this machine, the dampers are designed to absorb and diccipate any force brought onto them during any part of the spin cycle, be that high speed with the high frequency of vibration with extremly high forces or the low frequency and less powerfull vibrations during a more low speed spin.
These machines stand almost solid as a rock during spin. The cabinet is designed to completly counteract the forces of the dampers without shifting within themselfes the tiniest bit.
Further, these machines work pretty decent on most floors as they have dampers specificaly calculated so that the force that might get transfered to the floor is minimal.
These machines rely heavily on close to perfect balance as they have to use rather soft dampers to absorb as much of the vibration spectrum as possible.
This means long balancing times and sensitivity to dampers that age, but therefor they can theoreticly spin on most any floor without vibrations.
B) Machines with shifting cabinets:
Sounds weired at first, but works pretty decent.
Here, the duty to absorb vibrations is taken by 2 different parts: Both the dampers and the cabinet.
One example from which I know that of is our AEG back home.
These machines have dampers designed for high speed spin vibrations (high frequency, high force, but low way of travel). This means that during high speed phases, the dampers absorb almost all the forces.
This however means that most lower frequency forces go right through them as they don't have enough force, but far more travel and a verry low frequency.
To absorb these, they designed the cabinet to have some tendency to be abled to sway. As the cabinet is rather large, it is perfect at absorbing these low frequency forces.
For the consumer, the machine spinning will at first look incredibly cheap.
As it ramps up, it literally visibly sways and seems as if it would be not tightly enough bolted together.
Then there is a certain point where the cabinet will seem to shake violently, almost loosing control, but the machine just keeps on ramping up. You might think its insane.
Then, suddenly, the cabinet stops moving entirely, and the noise changes.
Now the forces are great enough to be properly absorbed by the shocks, keeping them out of the cabinet and the floor.
During ramp down, the machine will just as well sound silent with only the drum swaying and as it slows to low rpm, the cabinet starts to move again.
These usually can spin pretty heavily undistributed loads, however, that cabinet swaying makes them all but silent machines and they seem rather "weak", swaying around all that much.
C) Machines relying on subflooring:
Now, if these machines could take a third way of getting rid of force into working, they could cover high, medium and low frequency vibrations.
And machines such like Mieles do.
As first "force dump", they use a solid flooring to absorb low frequency lower force vibrations.
Their dampers are designed to only give to the highest forces, and their cabinet is either designed to only react to medium speed vibrations or none at all, leaving even more vibrations to the floor to absorb (which most likely is the case with the Miele).
Once we get to the short hard vibrations of top speed spins, the dampers finaly take part and less vibration is transfered to the floor.
These machines make their out of balance load tolerances dependent on which subflooring they can suspect, and the more force that can absorb, the less carefull the machine has to spin.
On a solid floor, a Miele will be rock solid through all spin speeds no matter which load. The cabinet won't sway a bit (to keep that quality appearance) and it will spin basicly all the time.
But until the verry top speeds, most force goes directly to the floor. Only as we go full speed, some vibration is split to the hard dampers.
This, sadly, means that if there is no solid floor, the machine will transfer all the force to building. And that can get violent.
Even at max speed, there will still be a lot of vibration in the feet, resulting in your unsolid floor shaking violently.
But as max speed only makes up a tiny part of total spin time, the machine will seem like its the noisiest thing ever, though it will look somewhat solid standing.
Basicly, you can't have all: A machine that spins verry unbalanced loads time efficently and verry silently on every floor is not constructable.
You have to take out one of these factors, one thing that supports the others.
Miele went for the one, others for the other.
www.theguardian.com
