I have a few duff vacuum cleaners, two of them I've been trying to make one decent one out of, but never completed, and another one which is too far gone to do anything with, anyhoo, I have a lot of vacuum spares knocking about.I'm not too sparkling on electronics, but I remember years ago that our old hoover used to go on 'blow' instead of suck at the flick of a switch, someone told me that if you wire a motor in the opposite way, IE connect live to neutral and netral to live, it spins in the opposite direction, although I've not tried it.My idea is to make a minature blowing machine of some kind, for various jobs and just for pissing about with, so if I reverse the connections around in the motor, will it do as I want and start blowing or will it just blow up? - I'm not too bothered if it does the latter as I've got quite a few, also, do I need to make this connection at the motor end or can I just reverse the wires in the plug?Or is it a non starter?TIA

In message , Phil L writesIt is, as they say, a total load of bollocks

vacuum cleaner motor reversal?

Dec 17, 2008 Last reply: 5 years ago 55 Replies

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Steve Walker 5 years ago

My parents had a cylinder vac when I was a toddler and passed it on to me when I bought a house. It must have been over 30 years old when it gave up (it had been running for years with two blades missing from one of its impellers - one I removed to balance it up when it lost one).

That vac had the same hose fitting on each end, so switching it to blow just meant pulling the hose from one end (pull back the release ring and it just came out) and putting it in the other end, so it took just a couple of seconds.

No filters to remove - it just had a cloth bag.

Blow was mainly used by us to try and shift something that was stuck in the hose, but it was actually intended for air powered tools - such as the spray gun that could be attached to the hose.

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Fredxx 5 years ago

I'm impressed you replied to a 2008 post.

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Andy Burns 5 years ago

Yep parents had an electrolux cylinder, there was a never-used spray-gun attachment with it that used a glass jar, but mainly the blow end was used to eject sucked-up socks from the hose.

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Harry Bloomfield, Esq. 5 years ago

It doesn't much matter which way the motor rotates, a vacuum uses an axial fan, so air will still flow the same way. Besides, you cannot reverse a 240v motor, by simply swapping the L an N over.

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The Natural Philosopher 5 years ago

yes, you can, if its a universal motor (with carbon brushes and field windings) and you only swap either the field or the brushes

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Harry Bloomfield, Esq. 5 years ago

The Natural Philosopher presented the following explanation :

True, but not by simply swapping the L and N input as the OP was suggesting.

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Steve Walker 5 years ago

Centrifugal, not axial. Axial do reverse flow when you reverse direction. Centrifugals just lose efficiency.

But you can reverse the supply to either the field or the rotor - assuming an old, brushed motor.

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Harry Bloomfield, Esq. 5 years ago

Yes, sorry, you are correct.

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Adrian Caspersz 5 years ago

Was an attempt at spamming his link, he is not reading this.

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bert 5 years ago

We had one of those. Wish I could remember the make. We also used the spray gun attachment.

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Steve Walker 5 years ago

Everyone makes mistakes. At least you knew there was a difference.

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Andy Burns 5 years ago

This was the one we had

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Steve Walker 5 years ago

The hose and fitting look very similar, as does the red (metal?) casing, although ours was blue. The white ends are a little different, the inlet end being black and a little more rounded. The outlet end also being black. I can't see the outlet end, but ours had a cast metal section, with knurled screw in the centre. Ours also did not have the handle on top, instead having a luggage type one - a horizontal strap, with the ends in metal covers - along the top of the casing. Underneath are a pair of metal skids.

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Adrian Caspersz 5 years ago

We had a Hoover Portable in Orange.

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Also had a blowing function, ye move the hose to another port on the case. I remember air that came out of there was rather hot.

Independence Day 2018 Special Part Two Hoover Portable Cleaning Center

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Tim Lamb 5 years ago

My mother's one was even older than that. ISTR the hose could be plugged in the other end to operate the paint sprayer.

My one attempt at spraying cellulose found a large quantity of hair etc. from the filter bag embedded in the finish:-(

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brian 5 years ago

I remember my father using the attachment to our Electrolux to spray paint.

We also had one in Physics classes at school to levitate ping-pong balls to demonstrate Bernoulli's effect.

Brian

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