Its newest such model, the DC59 Motorhead, is tiny, weighs under five pounds and has a slender, hot pink and purple body that resembles a sci-fi laser gun from an alien civilization obsessed with cleaning. It’s extremely maneuverable and comes with a bevy of attachments that allow it to be used in a variety of modes — from a stand-up sweeper that runs across your carpets and hardwood floors to a close-up, hand-held option for your couch and coffee table. It is powerful, capable of sucking up everything from the prodigious mess my children make at dinner to the more intractable horrors they’ve caked into the carpets and upholstery of my car.But even more interesting than the machines themselves is how the company created them. Dyson has elevated a method of invention that often goes unheralded in our software-addled times: mechanical innovation. Rather than the usual Silicon Valley application of algorithms and microprocessors, Dyson’s advances in cordless vacuums have been made possible by its willingness to rethink such old-fashioned devices as motors, gears, axles, magnets and other components buried in physical machines.

By its own admission, the company has not yet realized its vision of a cordless vacuum that can fully replace an upright. how much does dryer duct cleaning costAnd the DC59 isn’t perfect. air duct cleaning truck for sale in canadaIts battery allows for only about 24 minutes of cleaning between charges (and only six minutes on its higher-powered “boost” mode). best lightweight vacuum cleaner for carpetBecause charging takes two to three hours, the machine is unsuited to cleaning an entire suburban McMansion. clean fan toshiba satellite

For that, you’ll still need an upright.Yet what the machine lacks in longevity, it more than makes up for in accessibility. best way to clean neoprene seat coversBecause it is as small and easy to use as a broom, you might find yourself reaching for it several times a day, which is about a billion times more often than I hunt down my old-fashioned vacuum.best vacuum cleaner reviews 2014 ukIn this way, the DC59 seems more like a couple of other battery-powered devices that do not look as powerful as full-size machines, but that have nevertheless taken over the world: smartphones and tablet computers.Your phone can’t do as much as your computer, but because it’s right there in your pocket and starts up in a flash, you might spend a lot more time on it than on your PC. The DC59 offers the same wonderful trade-off — very good cleaning without the headaches of a bigger machine.

It’s the iPad of vacuum cleaners. Unfortunately, the DC59 has an iPad-like price tag, too. At over $500, it costs substantially more than most full-size vacuum cleaners, including some lightweight cordless models that also clean quite well.Hoover’s cordless Linx, for less than $200, is one such rival. Many tests, including mine, show that the Linx performs about as well as the Dyson. On the down side, the Hoover does not offer the Dyson’s useful attachments, its battery lasts only about 15 minutes, and it is a couple of pounds heavier. Why is Dyson’s cordless so expensive? One reason is that the company has spent — and says it will continue to spend — enormous sums to create what could be called a physically impossible machine. In the vacuum industry, there is one generally accepted method for making a powerful machine: Put a big motor in it. The bigger a vacuum’s motor, the more suction it can produce and the better it can clean your floors. The only trouble with big motors is that they’re heavy and use a lot of power.

On a battery-powered device, that wouldn’t fly.Hence Dyson’s dilemma: To produce a cordless vacuum that could mimic an upright, engineers needed to find a motor that was both small and powerful, a motor that could suck a lot of wind without consuming a lot of power. They couldn’t find any such motor from an existing supplier; instead, Dyson took the unusual step of designing its own motor from scratch.The Dyson digital V6, the motor that sits at the heart of the DC59, is about the size of a fist, and is built from specialized plastics that maintain their shape while operating at high speeds. Unlike most motors in household goods, Dyson’s motor is brushless. This means it uses a set of electromagnets that pulse on and off to coax an axle to spin. A more traditional motor uses a series of carbon brushes that rub against a copper winding, a system that creates friction, which reduces the motor’s life span and efficiency.“You essentially double the efficiency using this kind of motor,” Mr. Green said.

The resulting speeds are astonishing. The V6 spins at more than 110,000 revolutions per minute, making it one of the fastest commercial motors ever made. By comparison, a Formula One race car’s engine spins at under 20,000 RPM.But the problem with innovating in motors rather than software is that progress is slow and expensive. Dyson has been researching motors for 15 years, and its custom motors now power all its cordless vacuum machines as well as the Dyson hand dryers you see in public bathrooms. Last year, Dyson said, it invested $300 million in a factory in Singapore where robots pump out millions of motors a year.Although it has built three versions of its motor, each has been only slightly better than the last. The V6 motor, its latest, is about 50 percent more powerful than the previous version. That’s a huge increase in the motor industry, but in the wider tech world — where Moore’s Law rules and every new phone is twice as fast as the last one — a 50 percent improvement over several years can sound puny.