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- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
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what they did :
“Our product takes in a full blow of air and separates it,” said team member Leen Alfaoury. “Some of that air comes out as it is, and part of it comes out shifted. The combination of these two sections of the air makes the blower less noisy.”
Adds Chacon: “It ultimately dampens the sound as it leaves, but it keeps all that force, which is the beauty of it.”
Their design cuts the most shrill and annoying frequencies by about 12 decibels, which all but removes them, making them 94% quieter.
wtf is shifting?
The wording is comically awkward and imprecise. But if I had to guess, they figured out a way to fiddle with how the air is routed through the secondary portion such that the emitted noise is phase-shifted to cancel out the frequencies they’re targeting.
Seems baffling
Eeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy
But you can’t deny it has a certain flow to it
I wonder if that shares the same physics as silvent’s compressed air guns.
Silvent’s air nozzles reduce the sound level when blowing with compressed air compared to blowing through open pipes. This is due in part to the reduction in noisy turbulence from using Silvent’s air nozzles, and also because of the nozzles’ special design. Silvent’s air nozzles pass the compressed air through small holes and slots, which raises the sound to frequencies beyond what the human ear can perceive. This allows us to make blowing with compressed air both quiet and efficient.
Could use an even quieter compressed air gun
No, not the same … in your paragraph you describe an increase of the frequency at a level human hearing do not perceive while the other made cancellation of a given frequency using phase shifting and recombination.
Dyson gets shit on frequently for being overpriced, but the audible analysis they do one some of their products is crazy complex. Some years ago I watched 30 minute video on the design they did for the hair dryer where they were designing minute angles in the fins of the air impeller, and using a PWM algorithm to measure backpressure in a feed back loop to spin up the fan where it wouldn’t create loud noise while also increasing the volume of air moved. They tuned the mechanisms specifically to shave off tiny peaks in oscilloscope readings.
One thing I remember is that they said they couldn’t entirely eliminate the specific annoying sound frequencies because it had to ramp, but what they did is ramp to right below the annoying sound frequency level, then hold, then burst above the annoying frequency band very quickly. So the operator of the unit doesn’t hear the annoying sound because the device shoots past it so fast.
I’ve never heard of any company be that picky and put so much effort into avoiding one negative experience of a product.
And then they go and make an idiotic bathroom hand air dryer that is vertical and unnatural to dip hands into and too small of an opening so as to be difficult to not touch it with your clean hands.
They released that original Airblade hand drying 18 years ago in 2006 way before the hair dryer.
11 years ago In 2013 they released the Airblade V which doesn’t do the vertical dip thing.
Well, I see the old one 99 times more often than the new one.
I’m talking about this piece of crap design.
Maybe I’ve got small hands, but I’ve never had problems with them. I slightly cup my hands. At least it feels like they get dryer faster that way.
Haven’t these been shown to be literally the proverbial shit hitting the fan in terms of spreading bacterial matter everywhere?
Yes they literally pull in particles from the bathroom air and blow them directly on your hands.
Plus a good chunk of people only wash hands for show: the water runs for 1 sec it barely touches their fingertips, then go on to these dryers and whatever is on their hands flies out everywhere.
Maybe it was just me but I never had issues with the u shaped dryers. Although I normally put my hands in by the side, wrists above, kept them flat, and drew out slowly. Dry hands every time.
Other dryers just end up pushing water to the dry side of your hand.
That came way before the hair dryer, no?
All this tells me is that they have a great PR department.
Wait until you find out the analysis they do on car door closing sounds and the clickiness of specific buttons! Industrial Design is COOOL.
Buying industrial buttons and modding old controllers isn’t really mainstream but damn it should be.
A NES controller with switches and joysticks normally used in a combine harvester is really satisfying.
Haha no that’s not what I meant. Industrial Design is a profession and automotive industrial designers design all sorts of things, from the shape of the body to the swoopiness of a headlight to the specific clacky feel of various buttons.
Meanwhile, Subaru phoned it in with their window switches…
I have to run out of the bathroom when my wife uses her Dyson hair dryer because it hurts my ears, and you’re telling me this is by design?!
They also really really work well, theyre over engineered like crazy but last forever.
Newer ones don’t. They’re usually dead in 2-4 years.
Maybe the old Dysons. The new ones are rubbish. Shark all the way.
Not necessarily for sound, on industrial fans and drives, we can program in skip frequencies to avoid any resonance issues in the system. I’ve never done it for noise reduction. But I do some tweaks for efficiency and power consumption reduction. There’s some wild industrial design stuff out there, and in the end, it’s because it provides something the customer wants. I won’t go into specifics, but you can design the same components the same for multiple manufacturers and do some slightly different things in its construction to give the vibe the OEM wants, or to fix some inherent characteristics in the manufacturers platform. It’s REALLY cool when you think about it. Sorry to be so vague, but I have to be.
this is pretty cool but it’d be cooler if the started supporting right to repair. As far as i can care they’re cunts until they stop producing manufactured e-waste products.
It’s almost like it’s a requirement for every landscaping company to use the most noisy, ear destroying, gas-powered leaf blower that they can buy that can be heard from 2 city blocks over.
Especially gas-powered as they can then rev them all the time, raising the annoyance to completely new levels.
Probably. lol. You look out the window to see what’s making all that racket, and you see their logo on their truck / shirts.
It’s advertising!
Gas powered is still vastly superior for things like leafblowers. A good gas one can last 15 years and take a total of $40 in maintenance parts for that entire time, all while blowing harder. High end battery powered ones will last 45 minutes and need a couple hundred dollars worth of replacement batteries every few years. My stihl from 1997 still works like it’s new.
Just one nitpick – usually one can swap out batteries and continue to use the tool.
30 minutes from a $100 battery vs an hour from a $1.25 in fuel, no recharging, and no batteries that go bad.
For 99% of applications, a corded electric blower with an extension cord is far superior than every other option.
I actually own one of these but never use it because extension cords are such a pain in the ass especially if you need to stretch it all throughout the yard. I really only bought it because my dryer duct was clogged with 20 years worth of lint and this blew it right out.
Sure, if you need less power and want to deal with the extension cord, and where you’re blowing is within 100 feet of an outlet. Doesn’t work well for gutters or large properties or houses with only 1 or 2 outlets outside.
Huh. I can’t think of 297 other uses for a leaf blower, so I guess your 99% claim might be a bit…overblown.
How high are your fucking gutters?
? Not high enough to keep leaves from plugging them up. I mean, I could technically get it done with a huge extension cord, but that would be a terrible pain in the ass.
Cue right wingers protesting the new “woke” leaf blowers.
I’ll let my gas powered leaf blower running all day now to make your woke blower useless. Get owned, sucker
There certainly are plenty of people who use those things because they enjoy being obnoxious twats.
The same kind of morons rolling coal and destroying their engines.
I instantly imagined someone rolling coal with their leaf blower… you know it’s going to happen, even if they’re not diesel.
This is very true. I just know my neighbour wouldn’t choose a quieter option if he had the chance
Seeing how some very particular relatives are, I wonder if much of the gas leaf blower crowd is less “watch me stick it to the libs” and more “look at me, I’m cleaning my yard, that makes me better than you”
And by “cleaning my yard” they really mean “blowing whatever I consider a mess onto whatever is beside my yard, or in the general vicinity for the dust”.
I use things that work (even if you find them loud or annoying) because typically over engineered things (like the ‘quiet’ leafblower) are most likely very problematic and will fail. I just do not trust anything new anymore. Companies did this and forced me to stop caring about ‘innovation’ with their constant lies and fraud.
Edit downvotes clearly from people who are pissed they have to replace their expensive appliances every 5-7 years because ‘innovation’
I use things that work
Blowing leaves around instead of removing it, isn’t ideal then.
Leafblowers are used to collect it into a pile which is then raked/shoveled into a bin. The blower is much faster and less effort than the rake at collecting everything into the pile.
Everyone I see using them merely uses it to blow the detritus into the street. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense, but people don’t do that
Yeah, well, you can’t fix stupid.
Although if there isn’t that much, I suppose letting it dry and break down in the local environment is better than putting it in a landfill. If there’s a lot of it, then at least in cities I’ve lived in, they can and do ticket for putting yard waste or shoveling snow in the street.
No, that’s what a rake does.
Do you think a leaf BLOWER sucks leaves up or does anything but blow them wherever you point the machine?
Your thinking of a leaf vacuum which the article is NOT referring too…
What was the point of your reply, I really don’t get it…
Yeah, I figure that’s the kind of thing they’re going to say.
No we obviously need more cheap plastics that will dry rot in your shed and shitty rubber grips that will turn to sticky goo in five years, as well as lowest bidder designed control circuitry with a dozen corners cut.
I get what you mean, modern power tools feel like Fisher Price toys. They’re disposable.
What happened to the giant metal vacuum cleaners that doubled as a blunt-force weapons?
Maybe the garbage brands. Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, etc are very well made, and significantly more powerful than they were 5-10 years ago.
Hey, don’t diss Fisher Price toys. The old ones from 40+ years ago were solid. So much so that the iconic telephone on wheels and with eyes is still around.
Modern day crap though? Oh I’m with you!
Blowing coal lel
Coming soon: The all new, all American, COAL powered leaf blower.
Now with a slide whistle and megaphone attachments for extra annoying noises.
Whistle goes, “Woo, woo,” but that’s only in the mo’ning.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/zUXow3d3-b0?si=gr_4SDhNm3yUH0A6
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
pasta powered leaf blower
No, they’ve moved on to “DEI” as their racist dogwhistle now. Keep up.
“I’d never even heard of this 2 weeks ago, but after watching a single 90-second segment on Fox News, it’s all I can talk about and clearly the reason why the country is failing!”
Cue the left-wingers being rage-baited about the right wingers protesting the new “woke” leaf blowers.
All the while the leaf blower manufacturer is getting free publicity.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
For the people not reading the article. This is not about gas leaf blowers.
The challenge was to take an electric leaf blower and make it even quieter.
I forgot that this device is still being used lol. Masovian Voivodeship in Poland banned leaf blowers in 2021 as part of air quality regulation and… air actually got cleaner and no one complains about leaves on sidewalks
https://samorzad.infor.pl/sektor/zadania/srodowisko/6408199,zakaz-uzywania-dmuchawy-do-lisci.html
I don’t mind the electric ones, but I had a neighbour that would fire up a two-stroke backpack monster at 6 AM any morning there was the barest skiff of snow. And he’d try for hours blowing heavier snow that he could have had shovelled in 15 minutes. He was generally just an asshole neighbour all around.
we had a thread a while ago, and some dude was in there insisting that blowers can be “used for snow” because apparently snow blowers don’t fucking exist.
People are fucking weird dude.
I’ve used one for a very light coating or powdery snow, but more than a couple inches of that it’s just easier and faster with a shovel
IMO if it’s that little snow, i’m just fucking leaving it.
It’s not gonna kill me, unless it’s sitting on a solar array or something.
I live in a place where if someone slips on your sidewalk they can sue, so I’m a little more cautious about it.
Assuming we get snow ever again…
sue for what? Snow falling on the ground? There’s no way that’s getting through courts lmao.
For injuries related to slipping and falling. It’s a real thing, and why a lot of places nearby don’t even have sidewalks to avoid this liability
People forget brooms exist. Just like using a shovel during the winter.
You didn’t just start using electric ones?
They probably weren’t too concerned with the emissions from the leaf blowers themselves, but the dust and whatnot they whip up into the air.
Most gas-powered leaf blowers use two-cycle engines, which produce hundreds of times more hazardous pollutants and fine particulates than cars. Leaf blowers overtook automobiles as the number one source of air pollution in California during 2020.
I did want to kneecap the idiot that decided to use a leaf blower to blow the sand off the parking lot of the apartment I used to rent in. Was kind of tempted to send the manager a bill for a new clear coat on my car.
The fucking DREAM.
The sad thing is the students who actually did the work will probably see no financial gain from this. Students pay to take a class and then a company pays the university for access to the students and the students ideas and work is used by a company with no financial benefit to the students. Everyone makes out except the students.
Actually unless they made it working for the university its normal for students to retain their IP rights.
I worked at a UC and companies retained all IP across all UCs and my undergrad school from the east coast was the same way. I’ve never heard of a university that let students keep their IP. I would imagine it would be hard to attract outside companies since the companies pay to be a part of the program. Can you point to a university program that allows students to retain their IP for senior design projects? I know if a student is doing a project through the school for a different class like a lab and they invent something or are volunteering the university has no claim to it but senior design is different.
Sure: https://www.research.psu.edu/otm/student_IP_guidance
This is something I’ve remember over hearing as well from a FOSS advocate as bit of complexity they deal with.
So it looks like for senior design classes the students don’t have to be associated with projects where they lose their IP rights. But sponsors have the right to say a project will give all IP to the sponsor. I imagine how this works in practice is all external companies will require they retain IP then the professor creates additional projects where ip can be retained but these are usually canned projects solving some trivial problem that won’t really allow the students to go anywhere interesting with the project. I am not saying that’s the case but I remember at my undergrad and at the UC school that was the case.
How come there are no student unions?
Then they’d have to start paying student ath-a-leets. 😉
There are graduate students unions or research assistant unions. Undergraduates (not ones working in a lab) don’t work for the university they are customers. It would be like members of a gym unionizing. I guess it could happen maybe.
deleted by creator
I invented a leaf blower that is 100% silent and is shaped like a rake.
Interesting, my rake makes some sounds when I use it. It’s pretty loud on hard surfaces.
Let me just rake up all this sand and grass clippings.
Too bad there isn’t one shaped like a broom.
I think we’re on to something here. Like, different rakes for different things to rake up. Brilliant!
That’s way too expensive. I just use my fingers.
Can I borrow them to clean my yard? I promise I’ll get them right back to you.
Too bad these innovations wont make it down to the workers that stores hire from 11pm to 3am to clean the store parking lot across from me.
Good thing is you could 3d print some and give them to them. If they use a compatible blower that is. Or if you’re handy with modeling you could probably modify the attachment part.
(10 hours of work later)
“Ok how much money will this save me for the risk of your plastic thing melting all over my blower.”
Can I get those STL files? I’m gonna print one for each of my neighbors
No, the university gets to license it and squeeze all the cash out first. Try again in 15 years.
🏴☠️
Here’s the email of one of the students that were involved in the project. Try directly reaching out to them:
Madison Morrison: [email protected]
Mwap!
…is this not just a muffler/silencer for leaf blowers? Good on these kids! This definitely falls under the ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ category for me.
it’s electric.
Which means it’s automatically 200x quieter than a two stroke.
Idk what else they did but im pretty sure it makes almost no difference lmao.
Good job not reading any part of the article and confidently announcing your completely incorrect take on things to everyone.
correct me if im wrong here, but gas leaf blowers are inherently many times louder than electric leaf blowers to begin with. Calculating the near field DB levels doesn’t really count here since most of the annoyance is actually going to be from other people who have to listen to it running.
And since electric leaf blowers often have a much higher pitch, that pitch attenuates at a much greater rate, especially compared to that of an ICE meaning that it’s often silent, if not very quiet, at the same distance that an ICE would be rather loud at.
Also, in my defense 90% of articles these days are not worth reading, i’m sure they probably did something as i literally mentioned in my previous comment, but like i said, comparing this to a traditional ICE leaf blower (which people seem to fucking love for some reason) in comparison i’m still pretty confident that this would make almost zero fucking difference, since the vast majority of noise coming from an ICE blower is not air noise, but engine noise.
But yes thank you for telling me that i’m wrong and bad for not reading an article about an item that has probably 20-30% market share from my anecdotal experience.
And since electric leaf blowers often have a much higher pitch, that pitch attenuates at a much greater rate
As the article states, it’s this sound that they got rid of. A 94% drop in the high pitched shrill of the electric leaf blower.
Read. The. Article.
It’s a 2 minute read ffs.
i am aptly aware of this, in fact i’m aware of the fact that it’s actually a 12db drop in volume. Someone else kindly told me what was in the article.
But my primary point is still true.
and in defense of myself, most articles are bullshit anyway. 50% of it is filler, and 20% of it is useless information, edu sites are generally better, but there’s no guarantee, and i don’t bother with most articles these days. And my problem here isn’t even the fact that they did drop the volume of the noise, my problem is that i’m not sure this is a significant accomplishment.
There are a lot of fields actively researching this exact same concept.
So you’re not here to read articles ever? You’re just here to get corrected in comments?
i’m not here to read articles most of the time, because people talk about what’s in the article here. And in this case, leaf blowers, specifically electric ones are a bit quieter in near field operations.
Which i definitely expected, based off of the headline, but like i said, compared to a traditional ICE leaf blower, especially commercial backpack setups. Does it make a difference? Uhm. Not sure.
It’s funny to me that people yell at me about not reading articles, even though i understand the general pretense of it, without reading it. People literally corrected me by stating numbers, because that was the only thing i didn’t mention, since i didn’t read the article. And i didn’t even come here to speak about it, i mostly came here to complain about the fact that small ICE engines exist on lawn equipment.
I’m completely uneducated in this field, but there’s a 2 min video attached to that page that demonstrates before and after. Sure sounded better to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i’m not educated in the field specifically, but what i do have a knowledge base of is the fact that this probably isn’t a technical W for the leaf blower industry, especially judging that most commercial leaf blowers are gas ICE based equipment, and that even with the home market being more accessible than ever, a lot of home owners still use ICE based equipment.
Put together with the fact that the high pitch whine attenuates aggressively at distance, compared to much lower pitches. It’s likely that it has little benefit for anybody other than the user, in which case, hearing protection.
I’m sure this is a more broad accomplishment, but this has been a field of study across multiple industries for multiple reasons.
Whoever made that title should be launched into a volcano on the moon
Cool, do they offer whistle tips?
It’s that woo-woooooo
Give then a Nobel Prize!
