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It's a common problem for a load of laundry to be
imbalanced due to one side being more hydrophobic
then the other. This can cause significant wear and in
the worst case banging and the need to rebalance.
The idea is a sensor and attach points on the outside of
the drum. When the load is off
balance a weight can be
attached automatically to rebalance.
latter-day truck tyre version..
http://www.innovati...ing.com/service.htm [not_morrison_rm, Nov 11 2014]
[link]
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would you? I think it would just take a little longer to
accelerate. |
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Also, there needs to be a little more to this idea. How is it
automatically achieved? The imbalance in washing machines
can be many kilos. Why is it that the engineers have, so far,
just chosen to beef up the bearings and put a great lump of
concrete in the bottom? |
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^ This idea has the concrete moveable, so I'd guess holes in walls was the possible issue. |
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(Seems to remember seeing on tv a self-balancing wheel, just a wheel with a circular tube attached near the rim, with many large ball-bearings in it, it supposedly balanced itself out...but then you'd get clinky, clinky, clinky, bang, bang then silence...) |
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see link of truck tyre version |
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Dynamic balancing I'd not uncommon in washing machines.
A posh machine might even have a water filled damping
tube or ring to save on shipping weight. |
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My washing machine senses when there is an imbalance in the load and gives a series of well-timed 'kicks' to the rotation to better distribute the clothes, or will slow down or speed up suddenly to rebalance the clothes. It does all this in preparation for its final 1400rpm spin, which I think is impressively fast - more than 20 revolutions of a full load of clothes per second. |
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//20 revolutions ....per second. |
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So you're suggesting packing the drum with elderly dodgy, South American military types who wore dark glasses the whole time... |
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Call the app that runs it Cachunk. |
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The simplest way to do this would be to mount the drum on
a 2-axis slide, and simply adjust the drum center to correct
for the weight. |
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be easier to move the motor. |
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How do those beads balance the tire/tyre? Is
seems to me that if it is out of balance, the side
that is heaviest will get pulled farther from the
center of rotation, so all the beads will get flung
out to that point, making it worse. Maybe when
driving on the road, if there is an unbalance, it will
slam the tire into the road, bumping the beads
away from the overweight sector of the tire? If
the mechanism is something like that, then it
might be somewhat complicated to apply to a
washing machine. |
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[MechE] One problem with a movable axis is that
the heaviest part of the load moves in a smaller
radius so it doesn't get as much centripugal force
applied to remove the water. If this method was
used, you might want to have the ability to warn
the user that it wasn't getting maximum water
removal if it is too far out of balance. |
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You're probably not looking at more than an inch or so of
movement to get the load back into balance (unless the
person did a really horrible job of loading the machine).
Given the lower load resulting on the bearings, the same
drive design should be able to run a little faster, offsetting
the difference. |
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I think I would go for a pair of identical weighted arms,
geared to the shaft, independently movable. When
everything is balanced, the arms run directly opposite each
other. When out of balance, they are moved to a position
perpendicular to the axis of the COG offset, then are closed
toward each other, away from the offset. |
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//(unless the person did a really horrible job of loading the
machine)// |
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Shirley the 30 mins of automatic agitation will offset any
unbalanced loading? Unless people are nailing their clothes
to one side of the drum... |
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In my experience certain items, mostly larger and heavier
items, tend to
stay more or less where they are put in relation to each
other. As a result, loading multiple pairs of jeans to one
side of the machine is the single most common cause of
load
imbalance. |
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(note that this is for top loading machines only, switching
everyone to high efficiency front loaders is another
possible solution) |
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