But that’s not the only problem – these hairballs can get caught in the brush or grille of the dustbin and cause the vacuum to lose suction power. In other words, hairs can make the whole cleaning process more time consuming and less effective.

Not surprisingly, many companies are working to solve this very common consumer complaint. Most of them focus on the brush, the first point of contact, to find a way to keep hairs tangle-free. Samsung, also, came up with an Anti-Tangle tool for its vacuum brushes.

Usually, when hairs are picked up, some end up wrapped around the rotating brush, making it less effective.  To solve this problem, Samsung engineers created a brush made out of rubber, which bounces off dust from the surface, making it easier for the vacuum to pick up dust. They also designed the brush to adhere to the floor and evenly distribute suction power, and with the brush’s new air-flow structure, dirt, dust and hair are directed straight into the dustbin without clogging.  But that’s not all.

The Anti-Tangle Turbine

Dongjin Cho, an engineer at Samsung’s Kitchen & Cleaning Advanced R&D Lab, was looking at a gross fist of hair stuck around the protruding grille of the dustbin. While the majority of his teammates were fixated on building a better brush, he had decided to dedicate an hour every day to  take a step back from his daily job, take a holistic approach, and hopefully find some inspiration. What if he could eliminate these dustbin-generated hairballs? Or rather, how could he eliminate them? It was then that he remembered an article about aerodynamics of a turbine engine for airplanes.

When you want to untangle unwanted pieces of hair, you can physically scrape them off the grille, but you could also blow wind to prevent them from being there in the first place. Cho designed a turbine to blow air in the opposite direction of the overall airflow.

The genius thing about it? This turbine wouldn’t need a separate, dedicated motor. The suction power from a vacuum motor, at 35,000 RPM, would generate a wind strong enough to power a turbine, which with a set of wings to channel outer air outward, blowing away the hair and dust that previously would have clogged the grille. The grille would be flat, instead of sticking out, so that it wouldn’t wind up excess hair in the process. The new turbine, leveraging the centrifugal force – similar to the force of a tornado – already created by the cyclone system would now also help power an anti-tangle gust.

With a conventional grille, the air fan rotates and creates suction power, which can cause dust and hair to get stuck in the grille. With the anti-tangle turbine grille, there is a second fan that creates air flow in the reverse direction and therefore pushes away dirt and debris, including hair, and prevents it from being sucked into the grille or the dustbin.

The anti-tangle turbine, after many divergents, was engineered to generate more than 10,000 spins per minute. Though a faster spin would have increased efficiency, the lower-engineered RPM helped reduce the level of noise. That means debris, including hair, wouldn’t get trapped in the cyclone system or end up sticking to the turbine grille without creating an overwhelming buzz.

All in all it’s a simple everyday solution, less than an inch-thick, which would eliminate clogged hair in the dustbin, ultimately improving cleaning efficiency.

Tangled hair has long made cleaning unnecessarily difficult, but the solution has remained elusive. Samsung’s engineers took a different approach. In taking a step back to think creatively about the problem as a whole, a self-directed project, Samsung’s Anti-Tangle Turbine and Anti-Tangle Tool were born. The innovative solutions – for both the brush and the grill of the dustbin – deliver a powerful vacuum that’s more convenient and more effective.

Without question, there was great need for high-powered, but maneuverable, cleaning devices.

About 30 years later that need was finally fulfilled, when modern vacuuming revolutionized the cleaning process. Since then, the technology has continued to evolve and advance – vacuums have not only gotten smaller, more powerful and automated, but they have also diversified to better meet people’s unique cleaning needs.

Today, there are four basic vacuum types: the canister, an upright vacuum, the handy & stick and the robot. The four varieties have distinctive pros and cons, but each performs the same function through the same basic process.

At the most basic level, a vacuum works by putting in energy, labor and time. The output is then a hygienic and clean space or surface. But, of course, there’s more to that basic equation than meets the eye.

So what exactly is inside your vacuum that makes it work?

• The Suction Motor. The first component is one of the most important parts. The suction motor creates vacuum pressure and suction by rotating a motor fan. The impeller rotates at an incredibly high speed of about 30,000 to 35,000 RPM. A suction motor’s power is measured by multiplying the rate of air flow and the vacuum pressure, which induces air flow from the brush through the hose.
• Brush. On most modern vacuums, the brush is actually one of many different nozzles, each specifically designed to clean a certain place, surface, room or kind of debris. Vacuuming with the right tool can save significant amounts of time and effort.

• Dust Collector. There are two kinds of dust collectors – one uses a bag, the other does not require bags. A vacuum with a dust bag tends to be light, but the user has to buy and replace the bags at certain intervals. The so-called “bagless” collectors can be further divided into the single cyclone type and multi cyclone type. The single cyclone collector is a bit heavier than a dust bag vacuum, but it sustains suction power longer without changing a bag. The multi cyclone type, on the other hand, is heavier and has more complicated structure inside, but maintains its suction power longer than single cyclone.

• Exhaust Filter. A vacuum’s filtration system has three distinct stages. During the first stage, large dust particles that measure more than 10 micron are separated by either a vacuum bag or bagless cyclone. In the second stage, dust sized from 0.3 to 1 micron are filtered out by a micro filter. And finally, the fine dust or carbon powder are captured by the exhaust filer, allowing clean air to pass out of the vacuum. When the filter is working properly, the vacuum will emit exclusively clean air without dust emission.

So how does it all work together?

When the four parts are put together, the process is simple. Dust and dirt are drawn up via either a brush or another appropriate nozzle through the pipe/hose and into the dust collector. This process is powered by the suction motor and all air is filtered through the exhaust filter to keep debris in the vacuum, while expelling only clean air.

At Samsung, we have spent the last 32 years looking for ways to make that process better for our customers. Since our very first vacuum, the Samsung Canister, was released, we have been continually innovating to make the highest quality vacuums that are faster, more powerful and more convenient.