Universal vacuum-cleaner nozzle
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vacuum-cleaner nozzles require adjustment mechanisms to effectively clean both smooth and textile floor coverings, increasing design and material costs and user effort, as they often need manual switching between settings.
Innovation Solution
A vacuum-cleaner nozzle with a sliding base featuring part-cylindrical front and rear surfaces allowing stepless pivoting, ensuring continuous floor contact and adjustable air flow, enabling effective cleaning on both hard and textile surfaces without explicit adjustment mechanisms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the base of the vacuum-cleaner nozzle is designed with a fixed sliding surface for hard floors, then sufficient suction air flow and low contact pressure are achieved, but the nozzle cannot effectively clean textile floor coverings without an adjustment mechanism
Solution Approach 1:
The sliding base is designed with part-cylindrical front and rear surfaces instead of a fixed flat surface, enabling the base to pivot dynamically. This pivoting motion allows the nozzle to adapt its floor clearance automatically: maintaining sufficient clearance for hard floors to ensure proper air flow, and reducing clearance for textile floors to enable effective cleaning without requiring manual adjustment mechanisms
2Adaptability or versatility
If an adjustment mechanism is added to allow switching between hard floor and carpet positions, then adaptability to different floor coverings is improved, but design and material costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The nozzle performs the adjustment function automatically through the pivoting motion of the part-cylindrical surfaces during normal operation. The design eliminates the need for separate adjustment mechanisms, switches, or additional control systems, thereby reducing design complexity and material costs while maintaining adaptability to different floor coverings
3Adaptability or versatility
If an adjustment mechanism is added to allow switching between hard floor and carpet positions, then adaptability to different floor coverings is improved, but user effort and operating complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The pivoting base automatically adjusts the floor clearance based on the floor surface type encountered during operation. The part-cylindrical surfaces enable the nozzle to self-regulate its position without requiring the user to manually switch between preset positions, thereby simplifying operation and reducing user effort
4Productivity
If the floor clearance is reduced for textile floor coverings, then effective cleaning of embedded dirt particles is achieved, but air resistance increases and suction air flow decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The part-cylindrical surfaces create different local geometries at the front and rear of the base. The front part-cylindrical surface with its curved profile allows the nozzle to pivot and maintain optimal floor clearance dynamically, ensuring that sufficient air flow paths are preserved even when cleaning textile floors, thereby balancing cleaning effectiveness with air flow requirements
Data Source
AI summary
A floor nozzle for a vacuum cleaner has a housing, and a base on the housing constructed for sliding in a working direction on a floor and formed with a downwardly open slot-shaped port delimited relative to the direction between a transversely extending front port edge and a transversely extending rear port edge. The base has, extending forward from the front port edge, a part-cylindrical and downwardly convex front surface with a front radius of curvature and centered on a transversely extending symmetry axis and, extending rearward from the rear port edge, a part-cylindrical and downwardly convex rear surface having a rear radius of curvature also centered on the symmetry axis. The housing is constructed for movement of air upward through the port.