Way back in January of 2023 we placed an order for a Dyson Engineering box for the young people at Helm. This fantastic resource is given out to learning centres across the UK to use for one month for free. It encourages young people with an inquisitive mind to explore and develop skills that are the basic building blocks to engineering occupations. One cold day in October a huge box arrived in the office…

Ben, Katie, Calvin J and Calvin B tell us what they did and what they learnt:

Today in Helm we were given a package from Dyson of multiple hoovers for us to experiment on, take apart and put back together.

The founder of Dyson is James Dyson. It’s said that James originally came up with the idea after purchasing his hoover junior which he wasn’t pleased with, he noticed a lumber mill was using a cyclone like machine to separate wood particles from the air and came up with the idea of putting that technology into a hoover.

When he first started putting the idea of the hoover into play, it took him over 5000 tries to get it perfect, there is said to have been 5,127 iterations made of the first Dyson hoover.

Our aim of the project was to learn how to properly take apart a Dyson hoover and put it back together and understand the technology used in each part. There are many cool features of the Dyson hoover, it has a sleek and compact design, the most special feature is their signature cyclonic technology that can enable air to spin at high speeds within the hoover.

Dyson hoovers are known for their amazing performance and looks but are mostly known for how long they last. Dyson hoovers have a lifespan of around 10 years which is considered longer than almost every other hoover.

During our task with the hoovers we were taught how to take apart a Dyson hoover and reassemble it using 2 different types of screwdrivers and watching many different clips on how to do so.

There is many different types and brands of hoovers so you may ask ‘what makes Dyson so different?’  Well, Dyson machines are all engineered with six layers of advanced whole machine filtration. In a short explanation, this means they capture up to 99.7% of particles as small as 0.3 microns.

The Dyson hoover works by using its dual cyclone features double cleaning technology. This incredible technology optimises your vacuums suction and prevents dust from being blown back into the room.

Dyson has a few main competitors that sell similar products, these include Samsung Electronics, Electrolux, Bosch, Whirlpool, Kin Yat and Venture Corporation. Dyson is a known company that manufactures electric domestic appliances. As Dyson is a big and well-known company, you would expect them to have countless amounts of employees, however there is only 14,000 people working for Dyson now.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of HelmZINE!  We’ll see you in the New Year with the next edition where we’ll be taking a deep dive into what’s been cooking in Helm’s kitchen!