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Innovators: a lightbulb moment for Dyson and son(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) From spending his summer as a teenager constructing vacuum cleaners to witnessing the frustrations of his father working in their basement, Jake Dyson has been surrounded by the highs and lows of invention for most of his life. But while he is following in the footsteps of his father, Sir James, the 41-year-old is keen to point out his work on a new way of lighting offices and kitchens is all his own. "What I have learned is self-taught but what I have taken from him is perseverance; that can-do-and-won't-give-up," he said. The younger Dyson, one of three children of the inventor, has recently unveiled the latest addition to his high-end lighting units designed to save energy by slimming the number of lights required in the home and the office. It has taken him 10 years to get this far. He set up his design studio in London in 2004 and produced a halogen light, before switching his focus to light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are lauded for their long life. But while other manufacturers were claiming their lights could last for 30,000 hours, Dyson wanted to make one for life. The problem was that the semiconductor chips that produce the light also generate intense heat which damages the chip, reducing the brightness and changing the light's colour. A cooling system was needed to stop the chips overheating and thus lengthen their life span, Dyson said. The system he developed works much like technology in laptop computers and satellites, extracting the heat from the chip to "calm" it. The key is heat pipe technology that can move the high heat created by the LED away from the chip. Keeping the temperature of the chip low in turn allows more powerful LEDs to be used, and their brightness, colour and energy efficiency maintained Dyson said. Each copper pipe in the cooling system contains a drop of water – which heats up inside the pipe, turns to steam and disperses the heat as it moves down the pipe and away from the chip. It allows the LED chip to be kept at about 45C, well below previous temperatures. Dyson first used heat pipes in a range of lights called CSYS, which included versions for the floor and for a desk. Last week, he unveiled a new overhead light called the Ariel, in honour of the first British satellite which was sent up in the early 1960s and used a similar cooling method. The light – designed to illuminate long desks in offices, boardroom tables and kitchen islands – uses six of the heat rods to reduce the temperature of the powerful single LED light. "We do that by using six heat pipes which overlap in the centre of the light and three move out down the heat sink of the wings [of which there are two]. The heat generated from that chip shoots into the heat pipes, down the wing, and a convection of air runs through the wings and cools them," said Dyson. The powerful LED chips in the light fittings would be damaged in only six minutes if they were left uncooled, but with the whole system in place they can emit more light – the 8 sq metres (86 sq ft) area lit by an Ariel would normally require four lights, said Dyson. "We are trying to move away from having multiple lamps in the ceiling or multiple recess spotlights for example so we are trying to get an enormous spread of powerful light from one fitting," he said. At £1,300 on the high street or around £850 for trade customers when available next May, the lights clearly come at a premium. But Dyson points out that the fittings have a 37-year life span, saving on installation and efficiency. "Our business model is to make and design lights which last for life, not to make lights which need to be ripped out and replaced every seven years," he said. The units are aimed at offices with long desks or boardroom tables where instead of having individual lights around an office and further strip lighting to give general illumination the product would solely light up an individual surface, added Dyson. "It was about that sort of refinement, less fittings, more efficiency, less power required and giving incredibly even force of light," he said. In kitchens, the unit gives out the same light as six spotlights. The younger Dyson worked with his father for two years before going his own way in his 20s but thinks father and son may work together in the future. "We don't talk about our work but he is very proud of me, I am very proud of him. It is great. But I have done this on my own completely, right from the word go. "I spent a year and a half in Asia learning about supply chain manufacturing, setting up my own supply chain of manufacturers in Asia and just learning how to design, develop, test and manufacture a product to extreme quality," he said. Jake Dyson Products, the company behind his inventions, employs a staff of 20 in London and offices abroad, breaking even financially despite the high development costs. "The thing you have to remember when you are designing products and starting from scratch is there is a lot of investment. There is tooling, design time – it goes on for two years, we don't make things in three months," said Dyson. A family affair The Dyson name is synonymous with invention as a result of the work of James Dyson whose products range from a vacuum cleaner which operates without a bag to the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow which uses a ball instead of a wheel. Other inventions include the Dyson Airblade, a hand dryer for public bathrooms and a fan which has no visible blades. The Dyson name is synonymous with inventions that do more with less. Jake Dyson's light gets a large area of even illumination from a single LED, cutting out the waste of multiple light sources. Similarly James Dyson's signature products do the same jobs as traditional appliances, but with something missing: the vacuum cleaner was bagless, the fan is bladeless, and the hand dryer uses no heat. His latest launch, the robotic vacuum cleaner, the Dyson 360 Eye, goes even further, removing the human toil from the job of cleaning the carpet. However, the "less is more" philosophy is backed by a high level of technical innovation and engineering. The robotic vacuum for instance, which was 16 years in development involving 200 engineers, relies on two highly complex breakthroughs: Dyson's powerful lightweight digital motor and a machine vision system which takes in a whole room from a single fisheye camera lens, allowing the device to create its own 3D map of where it will be cleaning. Dyson's company said it registered 420 patents and patent applications worldwide for the 360 Eye. (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |