Green machines

The Eco Rating stickers that provide potential buyers with a clear assessment of white goods’ environmental performance now play a major role in retail sales.

Manufacturers want to achieve the best classification possible, so are redesigning their machines to reduce power consumption.

Technical Solution of Stoke-on-Trent began looking at the issue and came up with several initiatives that addressed different aspects of the situation.

One idea involved technology transfer from other fields of engineering.

"Washing machines energy is delivered through their main drive motor and we reckoned that there may be some savings using sophisticated motor control," explained Technical Director Andrew Stephen.

"Front loaders are

Stephen knew that considerable research would be required, so built a test rig with which he could subject washing machine system to extensive tests using an industry standard inverter to simulate the various washing cycles etc. A critical element of the programme was the ability to make continuous accurate torque measurements, and for this he used TorqSense transducer from Sensor Technology in Bister.