Vacuum cleaners are one of the most practical appliances, but they are not perfect yet: they make a lot of noise, and they consume electricity. All but OMIT …
In Japan, which is a very polite and considerate society with others, putting the vacuum cleaner is a problem, because it makes a lot of noise and could disturb the neighbors. And in small houses, cables are very annoying.
This is what happened to the engineer Hiroyuki Morita, who lived in a shared apartment and could only use the vacuum cleaner on weekends, as he explains in Yanko Design,
“I found that around 70% of users can use the vacuum cleaner only on weekends, due to noise and cable problems. Even rechargeable ones can forget to recharge. However, more than 80% of people use it for house cleaning“, he explains. So he came up with a solution: OMIT, a silent vacuum cleaner without electricity. You can see it here:
A vacuum cleaner requires a lot of energy to absorb dirt. He discovered that handheld vacuum cleaners already existed in the 19th century, but they were basically bellows that required a lot of constant force to be able to suck.
Too much effort for so little results.
Hiroyuki Morita opted For use rotational force, which is achieved by turning the vacuum cleaner knob. But the continuous spin is exhausting, so he has devised a system that gets 600 turns of the motor with just one turn of the handle. Thanks to them, 5 turns are enough to use the vacuum cleaner for 10 seconds.
And as you can see in the video, although logically it does not aspire as a commercial one, it is capable of catching dust, and even small, not very heavy objects.
OMIT consists of a planetary gear which increases the number of turns from 1 to 600. The problem is that this gear needs a great force to turn. This force is supplied a torsion spring, which not only transmits strength, but also accumulates it. So the vacuum cleaner can work longer.
The last key element is a needle bearing It only rotates in one direction and transmits the force of the torque spring to the planetary gear constantly.
With this system 5 turns are enough to be able to use the vacuum cleaner for 10 seconds.
Logically it is not useful for cleaning the house, but if what we want is to vacuum the car, a table, or collect any spilled product, this silent vacuum cleaner without electricity, you are prepared for it.
Will we ever see it commercialized?