Central vacuum

[vacguy1984]

I've used a Vacuflo 566Q and a VacuMaid S2600 that both had the soft start feature (coincidentally they both had the same motors). I've also had some Simplicity units made by the same company as CycloVac that used the soft start feature as well when I was working at a vacuum shop. Personally, I'm not a fan of it. It makes sense from a technical point of view but I prefer having a unit that starts up immediately.

Going back to the original question of this thread, I've got several videos on my channel with central vac videos. Some of which are mine. Right now I use a Beam 287S in my home. I also have a Eureka The Boss over in my storage shed. And in my collection I have a DrainVac Little Giant. I used to have a MD SilentMaster (believe it's a S2), left that behind when the place got sold. My all time favorite central vac ever would be the VacuMaid P-125 that my grandfather has. When I move, it's going to have a central vac since I can't live in a place without one. Would love to get another MD but open for other options like Vacuflo.

Do you have any pics or videos of your vacumaid s2600 that you could show? Or a short video of it running?

 

[panasonicvac]

No that wasn't my machine. But I can tell you that it looked like this.

 

[vacerator]

How long does it take for the motor to ramp up? A second or two? It's not like it's 5. If I want my car to go 60, it takes 6 to 8 or more seconds.
We have a Vacuflo 466Q and it does not have soft start. I just looked up the 566Q and it does not either. Bothe use a 7.2 inch 2 stage bypass metal horn motor.

 

[panasonicvac]

The 466Q uses a 116472 lamb motor that's 5.7 inches, especially since the unit is shorter in height compare to the 566Q as shown below. The 566Q uses a 7.2 motor but it's not the same one that the 560 has as well it replaced. To be fair, it's been so long since I used the 566Q that maybe it doesn't have the soft start, I could've sworn it did. But for certain the VacuMaid S2600 in fact does have the soft start up feature, it wasn't that long ago when I last used it. And I've noticed they're both even more powerful than the 7.2 motor that the 560 uses including my Beam.

 

[centralvacguru]

The "soft-start" technology was originally designed to try to reduce the in-rush current during start-up because of the instantaneous electrical requirements of a large brushed motor. These spikes on a 7.2" motor might reach 120-150 Amps for a few milli-seconds. The softstart was designed to slow down the ramp-up to spread those amps out over a longer time. But actually the problem stemmed from manufactures using too small of a relay and they were burning up relays prematurely. Our company never adopted softstart because we always used a heavier-duty relay and thus were not having major board problems. We did employ the technology in our products going into Australia solely because of the ANZI electrical requirements for that country. After about 20 years of usage of both, I personally have never seen any empirical evidence that the softstart technology extended motor-life thus we prefer not to include it on our relay boards. Why add cost and further potential for malfunction!

 

[vacerator]

The 466Q uses a 116472 lamb motor that's 5.7 inches, especially since the unit is shorter in height compare to the 566Q as shown below. The 566Q uses a 7.2 motor but it's not the same one that the 560 has as well it replaced. To be fair, it's been so long since I used the 566Q that maybe it doesn't have the soft start, I could've sworn it did. But for certain the VacuMaid S2600 in fact does have the soft start up feature, it wasn't that long ago when I last used it. And I've noticed they're both even more powerful than the 7.2 motor that the 560 uses including my Beam.

Ok, then the 566Q must be way more stronger. Too much for our 1,450 sq. foot home. The 466Q packs plenty of power. It lift's up small rugs even with a bristle floor tool. Vacuuming toss pillows with down ticking requires the suction bleeder open or the upholstery tool gets pulled off.